Earth-loving students of the future will not leave Mount Holyoke College with a degree in geology, geography or environmental studies, but rather earth, environment and sustainability studies. According to Chair of Environmental Studies Tim Farnham, students may join the new major starting in fall 2023.
Autumn Peltier is a 17-year-old clean water advocate. She is Anishinaabe-kwe and comes from the Wikwemikong First Nation located on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, Canada. According to The Guardian, Peltier’s advocacy for water rights began at the age of eight when she attended a ceremony at the Serpent River Reservation, where signs in the bathrooms read, “do not drink the water” and “boil advisory in effect.”
Offshore oil drilling is a common practice to remove oil from the ocean, and has led to a series of oil spills. On Oct. 1, the U.S. Coast Guard received a report of a petroleum smell off the coast of Huntington Beach, according to The Guardian. An underwater oil pipeline had cracked and was leaking oil into the ocean. The pipeline is owned by Amplify Energy based in Houston, Texas, who will likely be held as a responsible party. The exact timeline of the oil spill remains unclear, leading to an investigation into its origins by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Vanessa Nakate is a 24-year-old Ugandan climate justice activist. Nakate began her climate activism in Dec. 2018 due to concerns around the unusually high temperatures in Uganda. She began protesting on her own outside the gates of the Parliament of Uganda in Jan. 2019 to call for the protection of the Congo rainforest, which is facing immense deforestation.
The Connecticut River Watershed flows from the New Hampshire-Canada border all the way to where it meets the ocean on the Connecticut coast. Towards its southern border lies Stony Brook, one of the river’s distributaries that flows through the Mount Holyoke College campus. The entirety of the Stony Brook Watershed has only four impoundments, or dams — three of which are located here on campus.
While students settle back into campus life, the delta variant is an increasingly large threat. Currently, the delta variant is the predominant cause of COVID-19 cases rising in the United States. According to an article published online by Yale Medicine, The delta variant is a highly contagious strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was first identified in India in December 2020. It rapidly spread and dominated the virus cases of India and the United Kingdom before arriving in the U.S. in March.
No matter how tightly you hold the cover of your take-out container as you walk from the Dining Commons, the wasps, or more precisely, the yellow jackets, always try to sneak in your boxes. Many students are concerned for their safety when eating outside, and also curious about whether it is possible to remove the yellow jackets. The potential of being stung and having an allergic reaction is also an issue.
