A new academic-centered environmental club became an official on-campus organization on Feb. 13 following a lengthy battle to secure approval.
Sasha Davis, department chair of the Environmental Studies and Sustainability program, said the idea for the club originated back in the mid-spring of 2023. When Davis chaired the now-defunct geography department, there was a program-centered club.
Davis noted existing clubs on campus designed for majors such as Nursing and Architecture already exist, and the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Club is no different than them.
“This one is really much more for kind of students supporting each other who are affiliated with the department as majors, minors or other interested folks,” he said.
Some of the events the club has in the works include hosting and sponsoring talks, offering internship opportunities and hosting a job fair specifically for the major.
“The idea right now, because it just got approved, is to get juniors and sophomores and freshmen more involved in the club too because it’s been seniors that have really pushed it through to [getting approved],” Davis said.
During the process of creating the club, Davis and the club officers met roadblocks throughout the nearly year-long fight.
“I don’t know if I can explain why it took so long to get approval other than to say that we met resistance to creating this club every single step of the way,” Davis said.
Senior Natalie Deshaies, who serves as the club’s president, said some of the pushback from Student Government and The Office of Student Involvement came from questions about how the club is different from the Eco-Reps.
“The first time I went through assembly pretty much that’s what everyone asked, they also said we just sound like a study group and they said ‘This just sounds like Eco-Reps,’ but it was hard to have assembly understand that Eco-Reps doesn’t do anything academic-wise for support for the major,” Deshaies said.
However, Deshaies said the club and Eco-Reps plan to assist each other in the future with events and programming.
“We both see in the future being big supporters for each other,” Deshaies said.
Deshaies interest in leading the charge for the club’s creation along with Davis came during her junior seminar class.
“My class decided, actually in junior seminar, because for our major you have a year-long seminar, we decided to start a club and that’s when we started talking to Brandon [Carta] about it,” Deshaies said.
After a lack of response from student involvement regarding the club’s application in the fall semester of 2023, Deshaies decided to instead pursue the Student Government’s Constitution Committee.
“I ended up just reaching out to the secretary of the constitution committee and [the secretary] had no idea that we were trying to start the club,” Deshaies said.
After a few rounds of revisions, Deshaies was ready to present the club’s constitution.
“[The secretary] had me meet with [Carta] with the club’s constitution and he was surprised that we were able to meet with the constitution committee because he hadn’t given us approval status yet,” she said.
Traditionally, organizations need to secure status as an interest group from student involvement before going through the student government assembly.
Deshaies said she then met with Student Government Advisor Jen Ferrell to make final revisions and discuss hardships the club faced and then secured approval at the next assembly meeting.
“It was very satisfying because it took a year and a lot of fighting against a lot of roadblocks to be able to finally get it through assembly was very exciting and I’m happy to be able to leave something at the college that will benefit my major,” Deshaies said.
Deshaies said anyone could join the club, not just declared majors and minors and encouraged students to check them out.
“You are more than welcome to come ask questions, hang out, come to the meetings because we’re not a closed group … it’s open for everyone,” Deshaies said.
The Environmental and Sustainability Studies Club meets on Wednesdays at 4 p.m. in Science Center room 256.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
