10th Annual Student Sustainability Summit Sparks Activism In Students

Courtney Murphy, Featured Writer

Pace hosted the 10th annual Environmental Consortium of Colleges and Universities Student Summit this past Fri., April 17 in the Bianco Room of the Pace New York City Campus.

Titled “Reinventing Your Campus: Sustainability Starts With You,” the summit invited students from colleges and universities in the Hudson Valley area to share their efforts and ideas on how to further the efforts in making their campuses more sustainable and efficient.

Representatives of the Pace Pleasantville campus included environmental majors junior Anthony Morgan-Jones, sophomore Haylei Peart, as well as Pace Academy for Applied Environmental Studies (PAAES) members Professor John Cronin, Caroline Craig, and Donna Kowal, all of which helped to lead and organize the event.

In his opening speech, Cronin repeated the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “Earth Day can–and it must–lend a new urgency and a new support to solving the problems that still threaten to tear the fabric of this society… the problems of race, of war, of poverty, of modern-day institutions. Environment is all of America and its problems. It is rats in the ghetto. It is
a hungry child in a land of affluence. It is housing that is not worthy of the name; neighborhoods not fit to inhabit.”

The event began with a buffet lunch and with a short lecture from Daniel Bena, head of the PepsiCo Sustainable Development and Operations Outreach team. He mentioned the goals of his branch, to provide safe, accessible, affordable, physical, and sustainable ways of providing water to people in need.

“I’m on the [Environmental Policy Clinic’s] food justice team,” Morgan-Jones said. “I came [to the clinic] last semester, it focuses on campaigns that have been re-occurring. The food and justice team has been working with Chartwell’s, our food service [provider], and Pace to forge an improved dining experience.”

Attendees of the event then broke off into short presentations by students from other colleges and universities who had implemented food, water, and transportation changes and initiatives on their campuses to make it a better place.

Junior dance major at Pace Manhattan Irene Schulz said, “There used to be a vegetarian club on campus. I really wish there was an environmental club, but even bringing a garden to campus has been a long process.”

The event concluded with a short open discussion on what was discussed in each lecture and what impact this could have on each of the potential leaders in that room.