While Monday night proved to be a great night for N.C. State women’s basketball, many students said they had no idea “The BIG Event” was also the University’s first “green” athletic event.

The Big Event is a rivalry party that has been hosted every year for the past 14 years, but this year was supposed to be a little bit different, according to organizers. This year was the first year this event—or any other University athletic event—has made an attempt to “go green.”

As part of their efforts to be the first green N.C. State athletic event, Campus Recreation partnered with other campus departments like Waste Reduction and Recycling to make recycling and composting bins available, provide 400 free t-shirts made of recycled materials, and had volunteers collect recyclables after the game was over. A donation was also made to the University’s sustainability trust fund to help offset costs of students’ sustainability projects.

However, despite all of these efforts, many students like sophomore mathematics education major Corey Obermiller said these efforts weren’t enough to really drive home the notion that the event was meant to be green.

“I think having green athletic events is a good start when moving towards a more sustainable campus,” Obermiller said, “but I think they could have done more things during the game to encourage recycling or sustainability. They could have gotten the crowd involved a bit more. I know there was a video that showed how N.C. State students are researching solar energy but I don’t think it really grabbed the attention of the crowd.”

But other students like freshman elementary education major Victoria Clarke said they were completely unaware the event was designed to be green.

“I enjoyed the game, but I didn’t even notice it was a green event until I asked someone about the meaning of the shirts they gave away,” Clarke said. “I think it’s important to increase green awareness, so I would have liked to have seen them advertise this aspect of the event much more.”

In an environment where there are massive amounts of students in one location, freshman visual arts major Ebone’ Mitchell said placing a heavy emphasis on marketing the green message is important.

“I think having these types of green events is very important. People should realize that ‘Hey, athletics are fun, but why don’t we recycle afterwards?’  I think a good place to start is to say if we drink something, we put the bottle in a recycling bin,” Mitchell said. “But I don’t think it was very obvious that this event was meant to be green at all. However, I do hope that there will be more green events in the future at different sporting events.”