Rainy weather on Saturday didn’t stop the Buttstock festival, which included a barbecue, student bands, demonstrations, guest speakers, T-shirts, and plenty of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

“[Buttstock] was awesome last year, just because it wasn’t raining and there was a better turnout,” said Alon Hafri ’07. “I’m a little disappointed, but I’m surprised there’s this many people here.”

The Environmental Organizers Network (EON) provided the ice cream, a tradition that started with an annual festival that used to be held by Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont. Every year they advocated one large social or environmental issue. At every festival they had a postcard writing campaign and gave out free ice cream to all participants.

“Ben & Jerry’s is very environmentally conscious,” said Nicole Gentile ’07. “Even though they don’t have the festival any more, one of the stipulations when [Ben and Jerry] sold out was that the company still had to give free ice cream every year around Earth Day to groups like ours who advocated environmental or socially-conscious issues.”

Last year the EON sent postcards to President Bennet advocating the use of green energy, but students this year signed postcards addressed to President Bush.

The cards urged Bush to repeal the “global gag rule,” a U.S. policy which mandates that no U.S. family planning assistance can be provided to foreign NGOs that use funding from any other source to perform abortions, provide counseling and referral for abortion, or lobby to make abortion legal or more available in their country.

Due to the rain, the scheduled music was moved indoors to the Butt A Lounge, but student bands still played throughout the day.

“It was mostly cover bands, I think,” said Doug Walters ’08. “I saw Mascara play, and ‘The Ebb and the Flow’ was pretty cool.”

In addition to a wheat grass juice-making station, a booth was set up advocating composting. Students also made a large map of the whole campus, which outlined locations where students from dorms or apartments could bring compost they saved. Locations included program houses such as Earth House, Film House, Well-Being House, and the Bayit.

“You can save fruit rinds, tea bags, coffee grounds, and pretty much anything in a bowl in your room and then bring it to the house closest to you,” said Martha Kaufman ’08. “This is a completely student-run program that we’re trying to get the Administration to adopt.”

Three student activists also came from Oberlin University in Ohio to speak about a project they initiated called Biodiesel Oberlin.

“Biodiesel is basically fuel made from any type of vegetable oil that can be burned in any unmodified diesel engine,” said project head Sam Merrett. “Every gallon of biodiesel we use offsets a gallon of fossil fuel diesel (like petroleum) used.”

Merrett has been leading the establishment of a community level biodiesel production facility that will operate in the city of Oberlin. Biodiesel production involves chemically altering vegetable oil to reduce its viscosity.

The project is meant to demonstrate a design for a model facility that is inexpensive, easily replicable, and powered solely off of an electrical grid so that no fossil energy inputs are needed.

“Vegetable oil is considered a hazardous waste, and most grocery stores and restaurants actually have to pay to get rid of it,” Merrett said. “We have received the appropriate state licenses and can offer to collect waste oil for free from these places, which means our feedstock will cost nothing and we can sell our biodiesel at much lower prices.” According to Merrett, the fuel that Biodiesel Oberlin is offering would retail at about sixty cents per gallon, versus the conventionally produced biodiesel available now that retails at approximately $2.50 per gallon.

In addition to advocating the production and use of biodiesel, they also brought a school bus that had been converted from a diesel vehicle to one run on straight vegetable oil, or SVO.

“A bus that smells like french fries when you drive it—that’s pretty cool,” said Alon Hafri ’07. “What they’re doing in Oberlin right now is really great. I was really impressed with how far they had gotten in biodiesel production. I’m not sure if [their program] could happen at a national level, but I really hope that its use can expand in the future.”