As I’ve reported a few blogs ago, American University has gone K-C free. Amazing news, but you might wonder: who are some of the people behind this victory? Well, I’ve been hard at work getting this scoop (ok, “hard at work” is a little misleading: I’ve traded some emails, and got the scoop for you). In the next few paragraphs, I want to talk about Riley Neugebauer, American University’s Environmental Coordinator.
When asked about how she became an environmentalist, Riley responds that she “can’t explain it that well, because it always just made so much sense to me.” She points out that growing up in rural Pennsylvania, her “parents instilled in me the ideals of conservation, hard work, the difference between needs and wants, and the importance of self-sufficiency.” These things, along with the “great appreciation for how beautiful the world is, and how beautiful the different people of the world are,” directed her toward “helping the earth and helping people at the same time.” However, her environmentalism became more focused in college, where she switched from environmental science to environmental studies partially because of the “wonderful professors who really showed hope along with the scary threats to the planet and its species.” Also at college, Riley learned about community organizing, and perhaps more importantly, she learned that not only did she have a knack for organizing, but that she had passion for doing this kind of work as well. Her organizing experience at college lead her to see that she “really wanted to be able to organize, and especially organize young people around environmental issues, because of all our passion and energy and power.”
One of the main challenges that faced the American University K-C campaign was “figuring out what a letter from “the university” meant.” Riley notes that “there was no way that we could go straight to the President and have him sign this letter regarding K-C. Everything that you try to push through at that level of leadership take months, years, to succeed.”   Instead, what worked really well was figuring out a target who had purchasing power over the campus, but who wasn’t the president or a major senior-level administrator. Riley and Lindsey (GP’s Kleercut Student Organizer) “changed the letter [that stated AU wouldn’t purchase K-C products] a bit so that it applied to the Director in Facilities Management.” This director at AU “is the person who manages the contracts with Housekeeping services here, and so he has some level of control over what goes into AU’s contracts and what paper the school uses through the vendor with which the school works.”
I asked Riley to give me some tips to pass on to aspiring (and real-life) student activists and organizers. She gave me three. Firstly, she suggests that activists/organizers shouldn’t get into the mindset that “every administrator and every person in power [on their campuses] is evil.” She believes that “this mindset among the activist communities on many campuses is really detrimental to getting things done.” Along these lines, another tip she has is for students to “identify champions within the administration to help them, and act as a liaison between students and other administrators.” This can be the sustainability coordinator, but it can also be interested staff. Her last tip is that students should “not forget their power.” She points out that “Institutions are there for students [. . .] Rather than feel that your institution owes you the right to park wherever you want, or that it should use plenty of pesticides so the grass is green, you should feel it is your right to make changes which are better for our health, for our planet, and for the future economy in dealing with real issues like climate change, a lack of corporate social responsibility, poor forest management, and the loss of biodiversity.”
Well said, no? With Riley’s help, it seems almost certain that America University will be going far, leading the environmentally-conscious university charge.