Two-day workshop explores 'eco-equity'

Author: Brian Fung

Over a two-day conference on Sept. 29-30, students, faculty and administration representatives gathered at the Common Ground Center in Starksboro, Vt. to participate in a Synergy Retreat designed to enhance collaboration and communication among student organizations seeking to become more active with respect to issues regarding environmental justice.

Over 30 student leaders made the half-hour drive to Starksboro, where, set against a backdrop of forest and mountains, Dean of Institutional Diversity Shirley Ramirez and others led discussions, workshops and simulations that encouraged activists to think of environmentalism in a global context.

"Environmental justice is the idea that people shouldn't be exploited just because of their economic and geographic position," said event organizer Austen Levihn-Coon '08. "One of the key terms that was kicked around was 'eco-equity' and the idea that everybody should be able to live in an environment that is healthy and clean and productive."

Through guest lectures and dialogues, students were challenged to see the act of fighting environmental problems through the lens of social change and world health - and that any changes in one sphere may ultimately affect a whole host of conditions in another.

"The environmental and social justice movements are coming together nationally, and it's very good to see the same thing happening at Middlebury," wrote Scholar-in-Residence Bill McKibben, who delivered a lecture at the retreat on Saturday night, in an e-mail. "The essential insight of ecology is that everything's connected, and it's disconnecting things that has gotten us in so much trouble."

Retreat participant Chester Harvey '09 praised the event leaders for directly engaging students.

"The conference was very successful in quickly establishing relationships of trust and relationships of understanding between people that, I don't think, had ever really met before," said Harvey. "We almost didn't even have a chance to be awkward - all of the questions about, 'Hi, I'm Chester, my favorite ice cream flavor is this, and I'm from Montpelier and I'm a geography major' were left out. And that's great."

Assistant Professor of Political Science Nadia Horning, who led a role-playing exercise on Sunday morning, was equally impressed with students' ability to grasp the complexity of the issues she raised for consideration.

"People were incredible," said Horning, "just stepping out of their shoes and putting themselves in the shoes of other people - including African farmers, African government officials, U.N. employees, big western imperialists. The whole range was there, and it was incredible how they could put their thoughts together and conduct a meaningful exercise."

Other activities sought to explore environmental inequity. One workshop discussed the high prices of local and organic foods compared to ordinary meat and produce. The reality of race or economic status as a factor in the politics of pollution was also a topic of intense discussion, according to retreat participant Lily Hamburger '08.5.

"A toxic dump or factory might be built where a poor or minority family is because they don't have the political power to prevent that," said Hamburger, "whereas a more affluent community may have the power to keep the factory or the pollution from coming into their area."

The theme of environmental justice, however, merely served as a common thread for conversation in the interest of promoting what Levihn-Coon saw as the ultimate goal of the Synergy Retreat - developing a network of like-minded student organizations that would then be capable of tackling a pressing issue.

"There's two sides of it," said Levihn-Coon. "One is very much focused on bringing all these actors together to promote a single event. The other side is building the structure necessary for continued collaboration on campus."

More cooperation will allow organizations to multitask more efficiently, according to Hamburger.

"Environmentalism in the past has been pretty split," said Hamburger. "On one half, you've got affluent people thinking of polar bears and rainforests. On the other half, you have poorer people thinking of their kids with asthma - but with global warming, we have the opportunity to lift people out of poverty and fight environmental problems at the same time."

According to Horning, the retreat proved to be a learning experience for all.

"I didn't realize that issues of social justice related to class and race," she said. "I didn't realize that they were not spoken freely about on campus. I think that the organizers succeeded in creating a safe environment for students to call classism and racism and sexism what they are - and that was really good."

With the end of the retreat, student leaders acknowledged that they now feel more comfortable contacting members of other organizations, both to offer help and to ask for it.

"I can call up people from the African American Alliance," said Harvey, "and say, 'Okay, we're doing this, why don't you invite a speaker or someone on the panel from your perspective, too?"