One pair of teal grandma-style pants, teal turtle neck, red running shorts, red bandanna, leather belt, red stockings, red gloves and green hair dye.
In this outlandish outfit, sophomore Drew Bennett became the cartoon hero Captain Planet, as he wished everyone a happy Earth Day Monday and surprised many, since few students knew it was Earth Day.
“I had been growing my hair out since July and finally decided that I needed a haircut,” Bennet said.
“So I was sharing this with some residents and one of them said, ‘Hey, if you’re just going to cut your hair anyway, you should get a mullet,’ and I just kind of laughed it off when he said ‘I’ll pay you five bucks to keep it for a week.’ So then I realized this could be a business opportunity.”
“Then another resident said ‘Hey, you should get a green mullet, like Captain Planet’ and so I decided what the heck, I’ll just grow a green mullet and dress up as Captain Planet for Earth Day,” Bennett said.
“Why not dress-up as Captain Planet? I mean come on, he’s everyone’s favorite environmental super-hero and what better day to do it than Earth Day? Also, I just thought it would be fun to be a freak for a day.”
The campus responded in several ways to what he was doing. Most people just looked at him and laughed, but he said others would yell, “The power is yours.”
“Mostly, people just gave me these really blank looks like ‘this guy’s a freak’ and then laughed at me,” Bennet said.
Bennett not only dressed up, but also tried to help out. He passed out fliers promoting some of the Earth Day events taking place, including the speaker Julia Butterfly Hill, the Project Nepal documentary and DU Volunteer Day events.
Bennett then sat at the DU Environmental Team booth and asked people to sign a label or a bottle to send to Pepsi to protest the company’s refusal to use recyclable materials in the bottles that they sell to consumers. Later he visited University Park Elementary School with the Pioneer Partners program and talked to kids about Earth Day and how they can help the planet.
“It was all worth while,” Bennett said.”
