Last spring, Student Assembly (SA) established the Sustainability Committee in collaboration with the Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators. Amanda Kim ’21 and Gianni Hill ’21 were key in the establishment of the committee alongside Mike Moubarak ’21, the Sustainability Liaison to SA. The Committee was created with the intent of prioritizing sustainability and environmental awareness throughout the Hamilton community.
“The committee sees the Student Assembly as a place for collaboration in the sustainability movement on campus,” said Moubarak. “SA has a good position between the administration, the student body, and club leaders that we want to leverage to connect student-led sustainability movements on campus.
“We see a lot of the same issues being fought by clubs on campus, and we want to create a space for these clubs to share their ideas and work for sustainability most effectively.”
Since its founding, the Committee has organized monthly meetings with all the sustainability clubs on campus, including HEAG, Aquaponics, and Slow Food. This sustainability coalition hopes to reach beyond their immediate group of club leaders to the wider campus and say they have plans to begin a monthly electronic newsletter consisting of club achievements and climate news for students, in addition to creating a community composting program.
Moubarak, who leads the committee, acts as a liaison between the administration, student leaders, and on-campus organizations to realize sustainability initiatives. The Committee’s open office hours, which began at the beginning of October, have been one of the primary ways they have sought effect change on campus.
“Besides the collaboration with the clubs, we also wanted to encourage students to engage with sustainability more directly. We think that one of the largest issues in the climate crisis is a lack of communication between the public, policymakers, and scientists,” said Moubarak. “Therefore, we started the open hours to encourage students to ask questions and discuss the science and policy behind climate change. By stimulating discussion around the climate crisis, we can create more defined goals as a campus and encourage action by students and administrators.”
The open office hours act as a forum for both skeptics and those who want to participate in the community’s efforts to mitigate individual and College-wide environmental impacts. These open hour sessions are held biweekly on Tuesday nights at 8 PM.
“We always have to make sure we are empowering students. That’s why the Sustainability Committee’s open hours are so great,” said Kim. “It symbolizes exactly what SA is meant to do, which is to listen to students and represent those voices.”
Over Fallcoming and Family Weekend, Mian Osumi ’21, Jay Carhart ’21, and Sarah Stigberg ’20, acting as representatives of the Climate Strike and Sunrise Movement along with Kim and SA Vice President Jiin Jeong ’21, presented Hamilton’s sustainability goals to the trustees.
Describing his impressions of the meeting, Carhart said, “[We] met with President Wippman, Chair of the Board Stephen Sadove, and Chair of the Finance Committee Robert Delaney about the possibility of divesting the Hamilton College endowment of fossil fuel stocks.
“What stuck out to me most was how they placed a lot of emphasis on students to do better, which is confusing because most students do not have 30 million dollars invested in fossil fuels. From what I could tell, this was a foot in the door, showing that we care about the subject and that we will not simply let this end with just that one discussion.”
The student representatives collectively added that they hope that trustee opinions on divestment will continue to change.
Moubarak also spoke with President Wippman regarding general sustainability issues. The College’s Climate Action Plan outlines its carbon-neutral goal, and Moubarak said student groups hope to become more involved in realizing this vision. Part of the Climate Action Plan involves the Sustainability Working Group, which is largely led by Brian Hansen, Director of Environmental Protection and Safety at Hamilton. The group includes administration, faculty, and students and is broken up into subcommittees that focus on key issues like education and energy management.
“I have a seat on the natural resources subcommittee which deals with the physical landholdings of the college, like the glens and forest plots as well as the community garden,” said Carhart. “What we work on gets brought to the larger committee which will ultimately produce both a sustainability report and a climate action report focusing on how to make sure that Hamilton meets its carbon neutrality goals as well as finding any other sustainability strategies.”
Those involved in the Sustainability Committee and the Working Group list a myriad of ways to reduce Hamilton’s carbon footprint, including sustainable forest management and providing alternatives to gas and oil boilers. The College already has a few ground source heat pumps and says it is looking into other methods. Carhart also spent the summer as a Sustainability Coordinator on campus and devised a proposal to build green roofs on KTSA and KJ as well as maintain Glen trails.
“I think the first step should be hiring a sustainability director/coordinator as we currently do not have the personnel bandwidth to manage the task at hand,” said Carhart. “We are one of maybe three other colleges that do not have a sustainability director, and it shows.”
Carhart said students can also take individual measures to reduce their climate footprint, which he says creates both tangible impact and a more eco-conscious mindset.
“Doing small little things in your daily life is great, but organizing as a student body will get us a lot farther, and send a message that we aren’t messing around,” he said. “Our future has been robbed from us because of the greed and ill-moderation of others. Now it’s our turn to pay forward for other generations and be the difference — as far as I am concerned all other generations have failed.
“Read the Lorax, plant a tree, do whatever you can. Any little bit helps.”
