Students Take Action: Protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline

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Photo Credit – Emma Kast

Written By –  Buff Lindau

Said to be possibly the largest contingent from one school, 38 students and 2 professors from Saint Michael’s College joined 12,000 protesters encircling the White House in Washington on November 6 in protest of the tar sands pipeline proposed to go down the center of the North American continent. A tweet from Tarsandaction said Saint Michael;s was one of three colleges sending large numbers of students to the event.

“On Sunday we took a stand both for Democracy and for our future,” said Saint Michael’s student Liam Callahan, one of the trip organizers. “Oil companies fight with the power of money, but on Sunday we showed that we can fight back with the power of people.”

“Although the Keystone Xl tar sands pipeline is just one issue,” Callahan said, “it serves as a proxy for the greater environmental movement. With this issue as a tangible rallying point, my hope is that we will finally end our complacency and take action against the environmental catastrophes that will plague future generations.”

Green Up & Environmental Studies

Saint Michael’s Green Up organization and the Environmental Studies department helped launch the trip, with biology Professor Valerie Banschbach and English literature Professor Greg Delanty joining 38 students on the bus ride and protest in DC. Green-up leaders Karri Makinen, a senior biology major, and Liam Callahan, a senior history major, organized the trip in response to Vermonter Bill McKibben’s 350.org efforts to let President Obama know that many Americans want him to reject dirty energy and move to cleaner alternatives by refusing the proposed Canada-US pipeline project.

An Associated Press story quoted Saint Michael’s first-year student Dan Quigley as saying the pipeline could have an adverse effect on greenhouse gases and poses a hazard to water supplies. “It’s putting a lot of time and effort into something that’s pulling us into a wrong direction,” Quigley said in the AP story.

Atop the threats to First Nations people in Canada and to the health of millions in the U.S. and Canada, the project threatens non-human species, Professor Banschbach said, from sandhill cranes to polar bears, which were symbolized in costumes on some of the protesters. Burning, extracting and refining Tar Hill oil, Dr. Banschbach said, is “an unbelievably inefficient process.” And she said “Further climate change resulting from green house gas emissions” is inevitable from processing the oil of tar sands.

Famed Irish poet & professor of English Greg Delanty participated in a White House protest of Tar Sands in August 2011, where he was briefly arrested. His commitment to the environment was a motivating example for the Saint Michael’s student participants on Nov. 6. Five alumni living in DC joined the 40-person Saint Michael’s College group.

“It is important for all of us to act upon what we know,” Professor Delanty said, “to take an active part in trying to change old ways of thinking and doing. It is for ourselves we act, and for each other and the other beings on the planet – as grand as this sounds, it is simply true,” he said.

“As soon as I heard about this opportunity to protest the construction of the proposed Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline, I knew I had to act,” Karri Makinen said. “The protest was a huge success,” Makinen said, “with an estimated 12,000 people converging at the white House to make a strong statement that Obama could not have missed.”

Autumnal Views: A Bit of Vermont in the Fall

Even though this past fall didn’t bring about as much exuberant color that Vermont is infamous for, the autumnal views still brought about some beautiful scenes – Photo Credit: Nicole Marcotte

Food Matters: The Hurdles and Triumphs of Creating a New Campus Club

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Photos taken at the Food Justice Club’s  100-Mile Meal held on October 26th, 2011, which promoted eating locally by acquiring a majority of the food used for the meal from within 100 miles of Saint Mike’s campus! – Photo Credit: Nora Stoelting

Written By: Nora Stoelting ’13

Every day, three times a day, we make a statement about the world we want to live in.  The food we eat is so much more than just a part of our day; it is the epitome of who we are.  Food can bring people together, split people apart, but most importantly, it’s one of the only things we need, and because of this, food creates a community of compassion and understanding.  I have been interested in food sustainability for a while, but attending the Real Food Challenge conference (visit this site to learn more:  http://realfoodchallenge.org/) in 2011 truly broadened my definition of food justice, and helped me realize the potential that a college campus has in changing the direction of our food system.

Upon returning from this conference that about 10 of us attended, we were all motivated to bring what we learned to Saint Mike’s and to create Saint Mike’s first Food Justice Club.  Because the conference was in February, we didn’t have much time when we returned to campus before school would be out for summer.  We immediately applied for club status, which we accomplished fairly easily.  With $500 to spend on our first semester as a club, we were ready to spread what we thought was an exciting issue that sometimes falls under the radar.  We kicked off our first semester by making baked goods for fair trade coffee hour.  Cooking not only helped us come together as a club, but reminded people that there is a purpose to Green Up’s weekly coffee hour aside from free coffee.  Fair trade ensures that the farmers producing your food and clothing are treated and paid fairly.  Having fair trade banana bread and muffins at coffee hour helped get our name out and definitely spurred up questions about the importance of buying fair trade products.

During the next semester, with an even larger budget, we saw huge potential in producing the Food Justice Club’s first big event. Initially, we wanted to plan a Food Week with events every day such as speakers, panels, movies, which would all be concluded with a meal. However, we realized weeks before that we really needed to focus all our energy into planning the meal, because one great event would be better than several mediocre ones.  So, we decided to dedicate a great deal of our first semester to planning the 100-Mile Meal for October 26^th. This meal was dubbed the “100-Mile Meal” because we were able to get a majority of the ingredients we cooked with donated from within 100 miles of Saint Mike’s Campus!  We spent the weeks leading up to the event doing food pick ups, contacting musicians to play background music at the meal itself, and selling tickets to students.  October 26^th was a whirlwind of running around campus, cooking, running to the store to pick up last minute items, more cooking, and more running.  However, it was all worth it: we got so much out of it because we put so much in.

The Food Justice Club cooked a delicious 100-Mile Meal of tofu and chicken frittata, salad, pasta with pesto, and apple crisp. It was really amazing to see the event come together and blossom from the little idea that it started out as during our first semester as a club.  There were the inevitable panic moments in the kitchen: when the pasta started clumping together and when we realized we didn’t have enough eggs halfway into cooking the frittata.  But it was these moments that brought the group together, and upon overcoming them, left us with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.

Food is amazing in the way that it brings people together.  It not only created a community within our club through working for a common goal, but also created a community of conscious consumers within SMC.  Because we had such a great experience organizing the 100-Mile Meal, we are planning on putting it on every year.  We are hoping to have a large event in the spring as well, probably related to the Fair Trade Certification that is expected to be in effect March 1^st.  We are also planning on teaming up with the Peace and Justice Club for a Fair Trade chocolate campaign around Valentine’s Day and screening of the movie The Dark Side of Chocolate.  In addition, we are working on publicizing the efforts of the Food Justice Club around campus.  We just got space for a bulletin board upstairs in Alliot, and have recently created a Facebook page in which we will share food justice news around the world as well as events on campus.  There is nothing more exciting than being a part of a group of energetic and motivated students, and I can’t wait to see how the Food Justice club will evolve over the coming months and years.

For any questions regarding the Food Justice Club contact Nora Stoelting at:  nstoelting@mail.smcvt.edu

Room At The Top: Wolves Come to Saint Mike’s

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Photo Credit – Nicole Marcotte, Class of 2012 and Olivia Doty, Class of 2013