Exonians Attend Climate Action Day Workshops
Students and faculty participated in the Academy’s second annual Climate Action Day this past Wednesday Apr. 27. Students had the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of workshops, including watching an environmentally-focused film, hearing hip-hop artist and activist Tem Blessed and skyping with Exeter alumna Devi Lockwood who has traveled the world by bicycle and boat, collecting stories about water and climate change. Each workshop centered around a different aspect of climate change geared towards finding ways to address the global crisis.
Climate Action Day debuted last year after Justin Landowne ‘14 proposed the idea to the administration in the hopes of promoting awareness of climate change across campus. Beginning in the fall term of this year, a Climate Action Day Planning Committee, chaired by English Instructor and Sustainability Education Coordinator Jason BreMiller, met every Thursday to discuss and organize the event. The committee was composed of around 20 faculty members and seven students, all of whom worked together to select speakers and activities that addressed a wide range of environmental issues. “We tried to create a slate of workshops that gave people a variety of entry points,” BreMiller explained, listing the invasive species removal and the dune restoration project as two workshops that targeted students who were interested in hands-on activities, while the showing of the movies “Cowspiracy” and “Chasing Ice” offered students with yet another way to engage in the discussion surrounding climate change.
Lower Lily Friedland, a member of the Climate Action Day Planning Committee, led the showing of “Cowspiracy.” The movie explains the environmental impact of eating meat and the meat industry and its significant and widely ignored role in climate change. In the local dam removal workshop, students learned about the Exeter dam’s history and its upcoming removal, which will decrease flooding and restore the river’s natural ecosystem. For students interested in the eroding dunes along the New Hampshire coast, a three-hour field trip to Hampton Beach State Park offered the opportunity to plant marram grass and other vegetation on sand dunes to help restore and conserve the habitats that have been destroyed by coastal storms. In a workshop led by Evan Mallett, owner and chef of the restaurant Black Trumpet, students learned about the impact of food on our climate through an interactive cooking class.
“It’s about not giving up, being persistent, having a plan, setting a goal and connecting with other people. No one is able to do anything on their own.”
Other workshops included a presentation by Siddhartha Roy from the Virginia Tech team that broke the story about the water crisis in Flint, an eco-design walking tour of campus and a waste audit in which students picked through trash to examine how well our community is complying with waste management, composting and recycling practices. In addition, students had the opportunity to conduct an energy audit of Dutch House as part of a pilot project working to create a protocol for dormitories to improve their energy use practices.
“We really wanted to connect students to our own campus and to get them to think about some of the details in their daily lives that involve sustainability,” BreMiller said.
Under the Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN), members of the E-Board worked with students to organize a sustainable dorm cleanup at the end of spring term. PLAN is a non-profit dedicated to finding solutions to reducing waste on campuses. Exonians involved in PLAN organized a meeting in lieu of a workshop. “We are trying to create a zero waste during dorm cleanup this year. This means that we will collect and sell or donate all of the things that people don’t want or can’t bring home,” Epler said.
Hip-hop artists Tem Blessed and Cita Light held an interactive performance in Fisher Theater. Blessed found a love for music as a young boy, and since then, has aimed to create positive and constructive messages, contrary to the mainstream rapping that affects youth today. Senior Soren Blomquist was the student host for the workshop with Blessed and noted that the event was important because “it raised awareness for a problem more urgent than anything facing humanity in the next century, a problem that won’t be addressed without the education, empowerment and mobilization of large [groups] of people in a concentrated effort towards combating the issue.”
Lower Gavin Hickey found the workshop entertaining, especially because students had the opportunity to showcase talents such as singing and dancing.
“Tem Blessed was really interesting. It was a lot more fun than a lecture or a movie,” he said.
Blessed encouraged students to recognize their potential to combine forces and make change.
“Young people should connect their passions to these topics. It’s about not giving up, being persistent, having a plan, setting a goal and connecting with other people. No one is able to do anything on their own,” he said. Although upper Chris Agard appreciated the enthusiasm of Blessed and Light, he did not find their performance eye-opening. “I felt like they had good messages, but personally it was nothing I hadn’t heard before,” he said.
The Architect Panel featured John Skillern and Peter Reiss, project architects and managers of Todd Williams and Billie Tsien Architects and Architectural Resources Cambridge, respectively. Skillern and Reiss presented the plans for the future Center for Theater and Dance and the Field House, the replacement of the Thompson Cage. Both men are Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professionals. LEED is a third-party certification program that forms criteria for environmentally compatible buildings.
Lower Mary Le thought it was interesting to learn about how the campus plans on developing the new additions on campus. She enjoyed how they talked about the various ways the buildings could be sustained, including the plan to install enough solar panels on the roof of the Field House to power 96 percent of the building.
“The architecture was also very modern and seeing such a different style being incorporated into campus was really cool,” she said.
Overall, BreMiller felt that Climate Action Day succeeded in encouraging campus-wide discussion of planetary health and how the Exeter community can play a more positive role in creating change. He said he believes that through a commitment to the continued pursuit of sustainable practices, Exeter can model an institutional approach to sustainability.
“I think we need to continue to support and nurture the grassroots student initiatives that are coming up. The reality is that there is actually a ton happening on campus related to this, and I hope that it continues to grow.”