Academy Celebrates Climate Action Day

Courtesy of the Exeter Communications Department

By JILLIAN CHENG, ELLEN JIN and SOPHIE ZHU

     On Monday, April 22, the Academy took a day off from classes to celebrate Earth Day and learn more about the changing climate. Students had the opportunity to participate in numerous workshops ranging from speakers to hands-on activities to keynote presentations, each aimed at raising awareness of climate change and inspiring students and faculty to take action.

     Students on campus with great passions for environmental issues reflected on the importance of setting aside a day to focus on climate-centered activities. Senior Fany Hanzikova said, “I feel like it’s so important to have this as a designated day without classes, and have these workshops with people who are invested in this topic because I personally feel that it’s such an important one.”

     Senior Ariana Thornton echoed this sentiment: “I’ve always enjoyed Climate Action Day. I think it’s great to have one day in the year where the whole campus gets together to celebrate the environment and nature.”

     In addition to these positive reflections, there were also pieces of constructive criticism regarding the speakers and workshops. Reflecting on her experience, lower Tiffany Sun remarked, “The workshop I attended did a good job of keeping us engaged and introducing new ideas. However, I felt that the keynote speaker could have had a more impactful and more focused delivery.”

     Lower Sophie Yu also shared her insights about the workshop she attended, titled “A Life with the Land,” led by sustainable potter Al Jaeger. “He didn’t bring about more awareness per se, but as we were sitting there, a lot of us had an emotional attachment to the speech, which helped inspire us to be more aware of what we’re doing as we see this man who’s lived for 50 years on his own, sustainably. So, I think the workshop had a very big impact.”

     Thornton touched on the diversity of workshops offered and her own positive experience in a workshop titled “Telling the Climate Story in a Time of Crisis” offered by TIME climate journalist Justin Worland. “I’m usually one that enjoys getting my hands dirty and doing hands-on stuff, like gardening, or removing invasive species on the nature reserve. But I was really intrigued by the possibility of hearing a climate journalist talk about his work because that’s something that I might want to do in the future. So it was really insightful to learn about how he got into this line of work and what it means to him. I thought it was pretty cool.”

     Sun commented on the effectiveness of the same workshop, adding what she would look forward to seeing in the future. “Although I agreed with most of it, I’m not sure that I learned many new things, as most of the topics were pretty vague and didn’t go into detail about many subtopics. So, if there was a researcher or scientist with interesting research to show us how we can or they have contributed, that would be interesting.”

     “I think it would be more interactive to do things we are actually interested in doing,” Yu commented, reflecting on the effectiveness of the climate activities on the student body. “That will also inspire us to see what climate change is and how we can live more sustainably rather than having a keynote speaker trying to instill that in us when we’re not interested. I feel like when you’re not interested, you’re not going to be interested in doing anything about it.”

     Hanzikova shared a desire that more students would become empowered to take action after the day’s activities. “I am very interested in this topic and I care, but I don’t know how many people may care more or take action. I hope that there was some sort of momentum of caring. I feel like it’s so nice to show how Exeter cares and wants its students to care. I feel like the care is the important element,” said Hanzikova.

     After the workshops concluded, students were required to attend a final closing assembly held in the Assembly Hall. Two of the presenters at the closing assembly, upper Tania Luchak and Hanzikova, began their journey with an observation of the recycling bins on campus—the contamination. Despite the multiple trash bins, students were inadvertently throwing food in with recyclables.

     Hanzikova highlighted the genesis of their project, stating, “We recognized this as an issue. So we basically made this commitment [to address it].”

     Their efforts to implement a separating station and put up posters were initially met with no results, and they quickly shifted to education to get people to care about their cause. “I feel like the minor choice of, ‘I actually should put it in this bin,’ can make such a big impact on our campus and everything,” said Hanzikova.

     Upper Victoria Liu subsequently shared a self-produced video, “A Day in the Life of a Grill Cookie,” to recognize the unseen Dining Hall staff, and the day concluded around 3:30 p.m. with Dining Hall-provided pastries for the student body to enjoy, including brownies, cream puffs, and thousands of the famous Grill cookies.

     Thornton emphasized the importance of supporting student-led climate initiatives on campus to sustain the momentum of Climate Action Day. “One thing that I think is important is that Climate Action Day is powered by students. Exeter can continue supporting our student environmental action clubs on campus, and the work that students want to spearhead. We heard just a couple of examples, at the ending assembly, and those were really cool projects that students were working on. [I believe the Academy should keep] supporting student creativity and ingenuity.”