Shower Challenges and Megaphones: Colby College’s Community-based Initiatives You Could Use
If the dust ever settles from this presidential race, climate activists still face a harsh reality: effective climate policy will not come from the top. At least not in the next few years, which are extremely important.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this next decade is crucial to keep the natural world from a global catastrophe. Somehow, “I don’t believe it” is not a guaranteed political-suicide answer.
But it’s not all doom-and-gloom, folks. At the community level, some people are pulling their own weight from the climate change scale. And community-level action is gaining traction.
Funded by the EU, the TESS (Towards European Societal Sustainability) project found “community-based initiatives” to “have the capacity to support the transition to the low-carbon future of Europe.” That is good news – driven communities who do something can affect climate change. In fact, they pave the way for bigger actors.
The TESS project does caution that successful communities should have “favorable institutional frameworks and policy environments.” That is, organize well and maintain accountability.
Nevertheless, for these findings to translate into real world impact, communities around the world will need to take important steps to set up their own Green initiatives and activities. One community alone cannot save the world. In the name of collaboration, let this article serve as a how-to guide to set up community-based initiatives.
Good examples of Green communities are found in many colleges. So, let’s look at the #1 spot on the “Top Colleges for Sustainability” list in 2019 by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Colby College
The undergraduate institution in Waterville, Maine of around 2,000 students achieved carbon neutrality in 2013, “two years before its target date.” Colby College was the fourth college in the country to achieve this all-too necessary milestone. (Though, let’s not forget that carbon ‘neutrality’ is normally achieved by purchasing ‘offsets’ instead of swearing off emissions altogether. And that’s exactly what Colby does.)
However, what makes Colby College the focus of this article is not its carbon neutrality (nor that it is my alma mater), but the “favorable institutional frameworks and policy environments” that allow students to organize and bring them into a system of community-based personal accountability.
Not Just a Green Screen, A Background in Green Policies
Colby College has a long history of environmental consciousness. The college introduced the environment into its academia almost fifty years ago. Since then, environmentally conscious policies have permeated every part of college life, producing a long list of acclaims.
Colby boasts Green everything, except for its school colors (at least for now). Colby’s resume includes:
Carbon neutrality
17 Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings
SITES certified athletic fields
Sustainable dining by Bon Appétit
Student transportation and ride-share
A biomass facility
A 5,300 solar panel installation
Environmentally responsible waste, water, and building management
Keeping the institution up to par on its Green advancements is the college’s Office of Sustainability and its Environmental Advisory Group. Comprised of senior administrators, faculty, and students, the group is the silent brainpower behind Colby’s environmental decisions. Silent enough that not many students know of it. Frankly, I was unaware of this group until I began this research. But those interested enough can apply for a seat at the table.
Henry Harris, a current senior at Colby, has been a part of the group since his Sophomore year. The group, he says, is responsible for even more programs not listed above, including Colby’s bike program, the campuswide straw ban, and the phasing-out of disposable water bottles on campus. They also have less glamorous conversations about charging stations for electric vehicles and what carbon offsets to buy.
Students on the advisory group, Henry admits, generally take a back seat in these conversations. Their voices are usually tapped in when a student perspective is needed to understand campus climate and/or habits. Regardless, the direct inclusion of student representatives in administrative decision-making committees at all is rare among educational institutions and should be noted.
Still, students’ voices at Colby are neither scarce nor soft, especially when it comes to issues of justice. Environmentalism in particular has a strong base in Maine’s top Green college.
The ‘Green’ Pull
In the college-prepping realm, Colby’s passion for the Green outdoors is far from a secret. Part of Colby Admissions’ lure is the college’s environmental activities. In fact, within the first 10 days on campus, new students are taken on an outdoor trip as part of First-Year orientation, a trip that is advertised in every admissions tour.
It should be no wonder, then, that Colby attracts the kind of student that would overcrowd the Environmental Studies department. This year, the ES department counts on 12 faculty members; not included are the faculty who teach interdisciplinary classes related to ES.
The department offers the traditional Environmental Studies major along with Environmental Policy, Environmental Computation, Environmental Science (through the Chemistry department), and there is always the option to take full advantage of the liberal arts and create your own major across various departments.
Accountable Student Organizations
Students’ interest in the environment is not purely an academic endeavor. After class, Colby students meet for 11 different environment-centered clubs. (Bear in mind that Colby is just over 2000 students big.) However, the word “club” might suggest a somewhat reductive role of student activism at Colby.
Of that list, six clubs and organizations are involved in direct advocacy and awareness activities, be it screening a documentary or tabling at the student center. One such organization, the Colby Alliance for Renewable Energy that is “aimed at advocating for divestment from fossil fuels,” mentions “staging demonstrations and meeting with the administration” under its description.
EcoReps
Another organization, Colby’s EcoReps, takes a different approach to climate activism. The EcoReps are students responsible for upholding the college’s commitment to Green choices at the student level through peer-to-peer education. The Reps act mostly within their respective residence halls, holding “sustainability-related events” and “[acting] as a sustainable living example for their community.”
EcoReps are somewhat of an established presence at Colby. Within the first few days of the school year, students receive an introductory email from their dorm’s representative. In that same email (or a few days later), they will offer personal recycling bins, compost bins, and drying racks to every student interested in leading a more sustainable lifestyle. Common spaces often display one or two informational posters teaching students how and what to recycle.
5-Minute Shower Challenge. Once a year, EcoReps will hold their annual 5-Minute Shower Challenge, a campus-wide effort to encourage students to take shorter showers and save water. Randomly, a small sand timer with a suction cup will appear in the common bathroom with a spreadsheet taped to the mirror with a column for names, rooms, and number of times a five-minute shower was completed. If the student completes more than a given number of showers, they will find some fun sticker on their door one morning. Sometimes, there is another bigger prize involved for the floor or the residence halls with the most participation.
Could students lie to get a fun sticker while nothing gets accomplished? Absolutely. However, as recent graduate Cindy Nguyen tells me, “Colby students are excellent at shaming one another.” Shaming for the greater good, of course, to keep one another accountable. EcoReps do not publish any records for the water saved during this competition, but they do publish the data from their landmark Spring event.
Dorm Electricity Competition. Another annual EcoRep event that gets a lot of attention is the Dorm Electricity Competition. In this inter-dorm competition, residence halls are encouraged to reduce their electricity usage in an effort to win a grand prize. In 2019, the prize was “tasty treats” from a local bakery. While inter-dorm competition is definitively not a driving force at Colby, free food will always make a college student listen.
Yet, the event has another layer of competition against another institution: Bowdoin College. One of Colby’s natural Maine rivals, Bowdoin gets down and dirty with Colby over who can save the most electricity for a few days in the Spring. And Colby’s EcoReps use this to their advantage.
Suddenly, anti-Bowdoin propaganda finds its way to every poster board on campus, urging the Mules to beat the Polar Bears. A screen in the student center rotates data about the leading dorms, the lagging dorms, and how Colby fares overall against Bowdoin. It’s all fun and games, but it does something.
In 2019, campus reduced electrical consumption by 6.87%. Sure, these results will not save the world from heating up by 3oCelsius, causing the oceans to warm, the ice caps to melt, the coral reefs to die, and entire coasts to disappear. But it is a testament to the possibility of a community to affect personal behavior by using existing systems of interconnectivity.
Nevertheless, the present state of the world calls for more and Colby students are responding.
Past Clubs and Pastimes
Beyond registered clubs, students also get involved in national grassroots movements. In 2019, a group of students established a Colby chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and participated in the 2019 Global Climate Strike. Cindy, one of the student leaders behind this effort, called the event “a huge turning point in campus history to have a large gathering of students coming together for a specific cause.”
The CCL chapter has now transitioned into a Sunrise Movement Hub. Their Facebook page emphasizes that “the Sunrise Movement is more aligned with [their] values and the future of [their] club.” If anything, the creation of a CCL chapter and its subsequent transition into a Sunrise Hub shows that Colby students not only pay attention to the world but are actively engaging in it.
According to Henry, Sunrise Colby is “probably the biggest environmental activism club at Colby right now.” “They’re coming off the energy from the climate strike. People know who they are,” said Cindy.
And they are difficult to ignore. “Radical” and “active”, the organization demonstrates on Colby’s most popular public settings. “They had a protest last week on Miller,” said Henry (Miller is the college’s library and most photographed building on campus, by far.)
Along with other student organizations, Sunrise Colby has circulated on social media information about candidates’ environmental stances who will appear all the way down the upcoming ballot. To Henry, this has been a very helpful tool, especially the information on more local candidates whose stances might be more difficult to track.
Well-oiled Institutional Clockwork?
Sunrise Colby is not an outlier when it comes to the campus’s history of activism. “Colby, more so than other campuses, really does pride itself on student activity and student organization and student involvement,” Cindy told me. “No pushback at all,” she responded when I asked if Colby as an institution had affected the process of holding the climate strike. As an institution, Colby allows students the freedom to organize around meaningful movements.
“The problem is whether or not you will see changes that are systemic and long lasting.” Cindy asserted that “top-level administration is not that responsive” to the sort of activity that Sunrise Colby would sponsor, but that faculty, staff, and academic departments are. She remembered her professors were particularly good at supporting her throughout the process of the Global Climate Strike.
To be clear, student activism should not be confused for institutional action. These are separate actors within the same community that do not necessarily endorse each other’s every move. Student achievements should not be chalked up to administrative achievements and vice versa.
The way Cindy sees it - which is a common view among students at Colby - the burden of activism falls disproportionately on students. She explains that when the moment calls to uphold the ideals of social justice and respond to the downfalls of national systemic injustices, Colby students always respond first while the administration is held back by its own history - a natural occurrence of institutions everywhere, she admits.
Whatever Sunrise Colby and other student organizations achieve is theirs to own, not that of senior administrators. The mere allowance of existence is not a claim to ownership, especially when the burden of seeking change falls unfairly on students of marginalized backgrounds. “It is not a sustainable model for community accountability and community activism,” said Cindy, referring to the experience of marginalized students who push for change from a place of “hurt and anger” that leads to “upset and burnout when no one is giving you the energy back that you are pursuing.”
Student activism exists on campus as an external actor from the institution, despite belonging to the same community.
Some More Cracks in the System
Compared to the competition, Colby is doing well. First-place type of well. But when catastrophe is near the horizon, ‘well’ may just not be enough. Colby still needs to see a full transition into clean energy, update some old buildings on campus, further reduce waste, among other things.
Of course, one can always find ways to improve, and it is worth mentioning that the college is taking steps. Currently, the EcoReps have a reusable silverware and mug campaign as they try to reduce waste in the dining halls. However, Colby’s biggest crack in the system may be ideological.
Newer environmentalist groups, like the Sunrise Movement, point out that climate change is a symptom of systemic injustice that exists in our country. “Climate is not separate from equity and racial justice issues,” to quote Cindy. She noted that banning water bottles or having good recycling habits or having a biomass facility will never get at the root of this systemic problem.
Colby’s student organizations are definitely ahead of Colby-as-the-institution when it comes to issues of systemic injustice, a recurring theme in the history of student activism everywhere. Yet, the freedom that students have to organize will continue to shed light on these national conversations and how they relate to their community. If EcoReps keep students accountable to daily sustainability efforts, Sunrise Colby will keep the institution accountable for systemic environmental justice.
Is This a Replicable Model?
Of course. There is nothing inherent about Colby’s institutional framework that complicates the model’s replicability. Student activism at Colby is common, active, and allowed - if not welcomed - by the institution that doubles as an informal peer-to-peer system of accountability. At the same time, Colby’s decision-making groups continue to pass policies that ensure the institution’s eventual evolution into a completely sustainable environment. Surrounding all of it is the constant drive to make the world a better place.
Do note, however, that student burnout is a very real thing when the burden of seeking change falls on students. Communities should always keep in mind the wellbeing of active student populations to avoid perpetuating the hurt that often drives activism.
If you want to bring these national movements to your school, check out the Sunrise Movement and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby websites.
If you are looking into formalized systems of environmental accountability, check out our app!
Thanks for reading the Footprint blog! Keep in the loop on our latest blogs by signing up for our mailing list - and as a bonus, every sign-up will get free discounts on sustainable goods and services from our network. Or, if you want to start taking action immediately, download the Footprint App!
Interested in being part of our collaborative sustainability network? Check out ways we can work together on our website, and contact us today!
