Campus Character — Rhiya Trivedi

If you’ve ever been in Proctor Lounge, you’ve probably seen Rhiya Trivedi ’12.

“I spend a disgusting amount of time here,” Trivedi said.  “People call it my office.”

If you can’t find her in Proctor, you could probably find her coordinating youth organizations in her native Canada, working on policy in Washington D.C. or participating in the climate talks in Copenhagen.

Trivedi is a grassroots clean air activist.

“As an activist, you spend most of your time on e-mail and Twitter,” she said. “So I spend my time in Proctor drinking unhealthy amounts of chai [tea] and seeing my friends while I work.”

Trivedi has done tremendous amounts of work for clean air, but she was not born an activist.

“The way I see my life is that I didn’t have thoughts until I was 14,” Trivedi said. “I ended up at a boarding school in New Hampshire where my older brother ran the environmental group. The organization fell into my lap.”

When Trivedi joined the group, EcoAction, in 2006, the organization was not very active. However, during this time, climate talks were kicking up. Trivedi began looking at local environmental action and saw that what people did on an individual basis mattered, and suddenly the group, and Trivedi’s activism, began to grow.

“I grabbed on with two hands,” Trivedi said. “And I took ownership.”

So the environment went from being something Trivedi did not think much about to something that was the defining force in her life.

“It’s why I came to Midd,” Trivedi said. “And they put me in the Feb class, which was the best thing that ever happened to me.

The Febs were the most thoughtful, dynamic group,” Trivedi said. “The environment of being a Feb is awesome. Everyone is passionate about something — I don’t care if that something is underwater basket weaving — but it teaches me how to be passionate.”

Before attending Middlebury, Trivedi spent her semester off in Gujarat, a small town in West India, living the simple life.

“I almost didn’t come back,” she said. “I have this thing where every two years I [go] to the developing world. I have to remember how most people live and do whatever I can to help out.”

This past summer Trivedi travelled to West Borneo to distribute energy efficient stoves. In this area, women spend many hours toiling over a large open pit fire to cook for their large families, which can lead to serious respiratory trouble. By distributing these stoves, Trivedi combined her passions of helping the less-fortunate and environmental activism.

“I can’t decide whether these trips are more for me or for the other,” said Trivedi. “It’s so easy to forget when I’m here. I’m very susceptible to wherever I am.”

Trivedi was also able to meet Middlebury’s Scholar-in-Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben, who runs 350.org, a major environmentalist organization, who then put her in touch with a group of Canadian activist group called the Canadian Youth Delegation.

“The group is the most colorful, amorphous thing,” Trivedi said. “It’s international youth working for change. It’s about the future and our generation, but it’s controlled entirely by our parents.”

The Canadian organization gets support at home and then goes to the international climate talks, including those at Copenhagen, which Trivedi herself participated in.

“I joined the delegation in summer 2009,” Trivedi said, “and worked through December organizing young people in Canada.

“I’m embarrassed to say I’m doing nothing at Middlebury right now,” Trivedi said. “My mood fluctuates with the mood of the climate movement. And right now it’s in a big think. When Copenhagen failed, there was a need for international soul searching.”

So where is the future of environmentalism headed?

“It’s a weird push and pull between grassroots, in the dirt and the federal pursuit,” said Trivedi. “We can’t see the long term.”

And where is Trivedi’s own future heading?

“I hope I can stop caring and bake bread for the rest of my life,” Trivedi admits. “I have this secret hope of being a baker if nothing else mattered.”

But Trivedi understands that things do matter, and she has already immersed herself into the clean air campaign.

“People have invested a lot in me to be prepared,” said Trivedi, “and I am going to try to honor that. I’ll probably do some kind of political thing.”

There is one thing about politics, though, that Trivedi is not particularly fond of.

“You can’t wear flip-flops in that world.” Trivedi said. “I just have this thing about shoes. I hate the fashion of politics.”

Trivedi knows that not everyone can be like her and devote endless energy into the cause and thus bounces her ideas off of her friends.

“My friends are the guinea pigs,” Trivedi said. “They’re the real people who do other things, and that’s what important.

“But right now,” Trivedi said. “I’ve been enjoying Midd, trying to do well in school and loving my friends pretty hard. It’s so easy to be a nerd here, and I need that. I’m unadbashedly a nerd, and at Midd I can be accepted and embraced. I find that very precious, no jokes.”

---