Stepping into room 120 in Edmund Casey Hall last Tuesday, an odd but satisfying playlist of jungle sounds and happy birthday songs could be heard through the classroom’s speakers.
Balloons and banners were strewn across the room, tapped on the whiteboards, walls and windows. A feathered finch was tacked onto the wall.
Students were presented with a buffet of pizza, pop, juice, baked goods and cake. This wasn’t what you would typically expect when you walk into an anthropology class.
“For our class, we had to do a Darwin Day celebration,” said Marie Meade, a third-year St. Thomas student. “We decided to throw a birthday party for Darwin. So that’s how this came to be.”
Meade said the class divided into groups taking on different responsibilities. Some decorated, others provided food and refreshments and another created fun Darwin-esque games to play.
In true Darwinian spirit, it was survival of the fittest as the class divided into three groups to answer trivia questions on evolution theory and Darwin’s own life. Afterwards, they payed homage to his studies in the Galapagos by playing pin the tail on the finch.
“They started Darwin Day to recognize Darwin’s contributions to science,” said McLaughlin, a professor in STU’s Anthropology Department. “And also, to try to combat what creationists where trying to do in the schools and the denigrating of science, and so on.”
For the past three years, McLaughlin has held Darwin Day celebrations for her human evolution course. She schedules a day close to Darwin’s birthday, Feb. 12, and connects the students with the International Darwin Day website.
From there, it’s up to her students to decide how they will participate in the event.
She said mayors from Regina, Vancouver and Saskatoon have even gone so far as proclaiming city-wide Darwin Days. She said events, including the one held in her human evolution class, are declared and registered online. World maps on the International Darwin Day website can track events from around the globe.
“The study of human evolution is a fundamental and very vital part of anthropology,” said McLaughlin. “It underpins the whole discipline. The idea of evolution, that humans have changed over time biologically, they’ve changed over time culturally. They’ve used culture and biology to adapt to a changing world.”
McLaughlin said evolutionary theories can be traced as far back as the ancient Greeks, like Aristotle. But Darwin was able to compile research from five years of travels and studies into tangible evidence to support the theory. He put together a scientific explanation of how evolution and natural selection works.
“[Darwin] wasn’t the one to come up with the theory of evolution, but he was the one who made it accepted by the scientific communities,” said Devon Coyle, a student minoring in anthropology. “Without Darwin, classes like anthropology, or at least physical anthropology wouldn’t even exist.”
In the past, McLaughlin’s classes have participated in colouring contests, created board games, jeopardy contests and even one game where students had to correspond beaks to which finches, determinate on the proper environmental conditions.
“It’s totally a student project,” said McLaughlin. “So it’s whatever they bring to it… and always a birthday cake with candles.”
