After four years of political activism, the KU Greens is fading.

The Greens, a student organization that promoted the national Green Party, no longer meets regularly, said Sara Zafar, the group’s chairwoman.

The group has helped establish fair-trade coffee sales on campus, hosted an anti-sweatshop fashion show and lobbied for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Membership has dropped from about 25 students two years ago to about six people now.

Decreased membership is partly due to several of the founding members graduating, Laura Adams, Topeka senior, said.

The remaining members do not have the time or resources to organize collective projects anymore, Zafar, Wichita senior and Kansan columnist, said.

“It’s depressing,” Zafar said. “We were so active and did a lot of work, but there aren’t any clear ideas on what to do next.”

Another reason for the Greens’ dispersion is the lack of a well-defined national Green Party, said Galen Turner, Lawrence master’s student and a founder of the KU Greens.

“The national Greens failed to create a real movement,” Turner said. “We were successful in what we did, but wanted to connect it to a bigger picture. That picture failed to develop.”

Without a single focus issue like an election, people also divided into different interest groups, said Aaron Paden, another founder of the group.

Even though the Greens no longer meet regularly, former members are still active, Adams said. She said members had dispersed to work independently instead of in the group.

“The Greens got us to all work together and inspired us to do our own projects on things we were more interested in,” Adams said.

Paden’s time with the Greens was similar.

“The experience turned us all into die-hard citizens,” he said.

Paden, Turner and another student formed the KU Greens in August 2000 after working on a petition to put Ralph Nader on the Kansas ballot.

Nader appeared on the Kansas ballot as an independent candidate in 2000.

The Greens continued to promote the idea of a third national party after the election, Paden said. Turner said he was upset the Greens were no longer active. The Greens didn’t actively campaign in the 2004 election.

That hasn’t stopped the old members from promoting political issues, he said.

Other political interests include a program to ensure the diversity of crop seeds, ecologically sustainable student housing and CLAS tuition increases.

“For a while the KU Greens group was the best method to do this,” Turner said. “But due to changing political climates and changing lives the KU Greens are no longer the best avenue.”

— Edited by Laura Francoviglia