Student Sustainability Summit
Sunday, March 26, was the second Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference Student Summit, co-hosted by AU and UMD at College Park. Watching attendees and presenters arrive felt a little like I was dropping a kid off at college. This summit had been in the works since September for me, and even longer for the Office of Sustainability and UMD. It had evolved into a full-fledged conference, with people that were excited to attend and present at it, some of whom came from as far as Texas. At that point, there was nothing else to be done but hope that we’d prepared adequately.
And we had! I wouldn’t say the summit went off without a hitch, but it was pretty close. Two parts that really stood out to me were our plenary speaker, Preston Mitchum, and the students at the summit themselves.
Preston Mitchum works at the Center for Health and Gender Equity. He works mainly with human rights for LGBT communities and women. He spun the concept of sustainability around, and asked us to think about how human rights and sustainability are interdependent; you can’t achieve one without the other. Since the planet is pretty essential to our wellbeing as a species, I had thought that it should be everyone’s first priority. His speech made me realize that as an environmentalist, I need to be fighting for a world that protects its people, just as much as its people protect it.
The second part that stuck with me was the attendees. Everyone at the summit was professional and knowledgeable, but they were also down-to-earth and happy to ask and answer questions. They were participatory and engaged in every session, and the general atmosphere felt friendly and collaborative. The idea of the summit was to share ideas about spreading sustainability values on campuses, and because of the students at the summit, I walked away with at least three new ideas to use at AU (and contact information to go with them!).
Overall, the student summit was a huge success. Everyone I spoke to reiterated how much they had learned, and how connected they felt to this newly formed network of other students. Working in sustainability can sometimes be difficult, isolating, and frustrating, and events like this one help me realize how much hope and innovation this field generates. I left on a “sustainability high” that carried me through the rest of the day.
