What is your involvement in expanding and/or promoting green initiatives on campus?

As a student, a teacher, and an activist, I have been involved in greening initiatives on our campus in a variety of ways. As an undergraduate student, I became the campus’s first-ever student Recycling Coordinator. This position was created by the efforts of an internship I was involved in through our chapter of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), which Professor Brian Obach from the Sociology Department oversaw. Throughout that semester, the other interns and I embodied every method of activism from digging through the trash bins on campus to getting our views published in The Oracle to actually sitting down with administrators to create a recycling system. Besides implementing these changes, as Recycling Coordinator I lead our campus’s efforts in the nationwide competition Recycle Mania as a challenge to our campus to recycle as much as possible. The great greening momentum seen on our campus today is only one of the many victories of these recycling efforts. In an attempt to continue this greening momentum in an academic setting, the theme of the section of Freshman Composition II that I teach is “Social Justice.”

Outside interests: As an undergrad I also was active as NYPIRG’s Environmental Protection Project Leader and helped initiate the annual Earth Day Festival in Hasbrouck Park. This month will mark the festival’s fourth year.

Inspiration: Rather than view all the social and environmental injustices of our campus, local, and global communities as a sign of certain doom and respond with a fit of rage as I was once so apt to, I find myself inspired to fight harder for social change. Social injustice inspires me to try to save the world.

Mentor: Since the beginning of my efforts on the recycling project, Professor Brian Obach has been not only a mentor to activists such as myself, but also a valuable resource and a friend. He is the embodiment of the academic activist.