About 25 people gathered underneath the Campanile on Saturday, painted their faces with fake blood and bruises and unfolded banners decrying coal.

The bells tolled at 11 a.m. and they called the White House to leave messages for President Obama, asking him to take a stronger stance on climate change issues. Then they marched.

The group, ActivUS, is an ISU group, formerly known as Students for Iowa PIRG, that campaigns for environmental and social justice on campus.

The group’s president, Graham Jordison, senior in political science, said the zombie-themed march was meant as a playful homage to Halloween, but was also meant to represent people who need to wake up from their zombie-like states and pay attention to the world around them.

According a press release, the group wants ISU President Geoffroy to “wake up and eliminate dirty coal on campus.”

Campus environmental group discusses sustainability with President Geoffroy

After carrying their banners across Central Campus, down in front of Ross Hall and to the coal plant, the group stopped and listened to speakers discuss the negative consequences that coal has on the environment, as well as the current state of climate change legislation.

Mark Edwards, ISU alumnus, said he’s lived near the Des Moines River since the 1970s and watched, dismayed, as a contractor for Iowa State dumped fly ash from the coal plant near the Des Moines River, potentially damaging his water supply.

According to an Iowa State Daily story published in 2004, a company known as the Biosolids Management Group was dumping a fly ash by-product in a gravel pit known as the Victoria M. Meier, east of the Des Moines River in Boone.

Edwards said he wanted the university to take more responsibility for its waste by-products and has been actively involved on campus in sustainability issues since he graduated in 1969.

“The more I understand what’s going on,” he said, “the more I feel that I have to take more action. It’s not getting better — it’s getting worse.”