“One day early in the semester I was walking by the UMC and I saw some people with Beyond Coal shirts…I stopped one and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ She gave me a basic campaign overview and asked me, “Can you help out? Can you sign this petition?” I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m glad you guys are actually doing something about this. That’s a pretty noble cause. 100 percent clean energy, that’s pretty intense.’ From there, I did some phone banking that night and talked to Rachel Shiozaki extensively about what the campaign is all about, how it’s going national. After that, I thought, “This is something worthwhile to get into.”

What have you contributed to the campaign?

I’ve done phone banking to get people to our events. I’ve done some petitioning to get people to sign up. I’ve talked to my friends and got my friends from my dorm involved. My position is the student groups coordinator, so I’ve gotten other student groups involved. My contribution has definitely been to get my friends and to get other students groups involved, so I feel pretty accomplished in that.”

What’s been the greatest challenge personally for your involvement in the campaign?

“The toughest part has been allocating enough time to actually reach our weekly goal. The most challenging is trying to live up to the campaign organizer’s expectations.”

What’s been the most rewarding aspect of your involvement?

“Connections, seriously. If I hadn’t have done this I wouldn’t have met a lot of people that I’ve met this semester. Whether they’re in the environmental studies club, in the environmental center, or in many other groups on campus. Or friends that I’ve made through the campaign itself. The most rewarding thing for me is the amount and the quality of the people that I’ve met. Because there’s tons of kids on campus, right? But not many people really care about the issues that I care about, which is  renewable energy, fossil fuel use, and the contribution to global warming.”

If you could change one thing about the way the campaign is run what would it be?

“We’re focusing on something negative, the mining and burning of coal. I personally would rather focus on the positive side of it, which is the solutions and the alternatives to burning coal. That’s what I would change.”

Why other than to help move CU past coal to sustainable energy should people join the campaign? Is that the only reason?

There’s a few reasons why people should join the campaign, that being the main one, but there’s definitely more to it. I think awareness is extremely key. The more people that know about the bad practices that go into mining and transporting  and burning coal, the more they kind of turn it around in their heads and think to themselves, ‘Why are we still doing this? It’s such a horribly dangerous and polluting and unhealthy practice.’ Through that awareness and thinking about it, they will hopefully push themselves to think, ‘What else could we be doing? What are the solutions to the problem.” Another thing is the future of the planet in general. The things that we’re doing today are very unsustainable, one being the mining and burning of coal. To get involved in something like this and think about solutions to the tough problems that are facing our society, especially for our generation, is really key, so that in the future everything will come out better than it is now.”

By the end of the semester, organizers on the CU-Boulder campus had recruited eight student coordinators, 20 active volunteers, and compiled a larger database of about 500 individuals who were interested in helping.

“I feel like we have accomplished a lot, having just started this semester,” said Rachel Shiozaki,  lead campaign organizer for the CU Beyond Coal Campaign. “We have close to 1,600 individual petitions from campus community members. That’s a significant amount of individuals who clearly care about this issue.”

The campaign events included phone banking nights, petitioning, multiple rallies, film screenings, and various networking and recruiting meetings.

“It’s a challenge to get students in college to not only give their studies their all, not only continue to work if they to work, but to also commit to a greater campaign cause and idea that is so much larger than they are, and to give a lot of their time,” Shiozaki said.

“Knowing that youth and college-age students have been at the forefront of every single social change movement in recent history is really exciting for me to be a part of our movement, which is the fight for a clean and just energy future.”

Steve Dannenberg, a senior psychology major and events coordinator for the campaign said his involvement experience during the semester has been positive overall.

“It’s been enriching and great working toward a goal that I believe in,” said Dannenberg, who plans to continue participating in the campaign during the next semester in the spring of 2010.

For Dannenberg, the greatest challenge was to keep volunteers actively involved. Other student coordinators encountered different challenges.

“At the Homecoming Parade, we were trying to get people from frats and sororities to sign the petition,” said Marisa Howlette, a senior psychology major and media coordinator. “We were just trying to collect names and gather support, but they were just like, ‘No.’

For other students, petitioning and canvassing, the direct, face-to-face interactions with people, provides the most highs and lows.

Laila Amerman, a sophomore environmental studies major who works with the Beyond Coal campaign describes her experience talking to new people:

“When you meet someone who understands where you’re coming from and is like, ‘Yeah, I support this and I will help you.’ That is the most beautiful part of it, when I’m outreaching to people and it works, and people listen and they understand and all they needed was a little push or some information to help make up their mind. It’s a feeling of accomplishment where I feel like I’m not doing this for no reason,” said Amerman, who is also working to organize a youth delegation to meet with Governor Bill Ritter.

Amerman also points out that for every successful outreach, there are many unsuccessful attempts.

“The biggest challenge has been that I will sit there and I will spiel and I will rant about all these problems with coal and the environmenta and ocean acidificiation and habitat degradation and it’s still not enough. People will say, ‘Ok, well, I’ll think about it.’ Sixty perecent of the popluation doesn’t believe that climate change is an actual problem. It is very, very frusterating.”

Whether it is apathy or other priorities, the students had many explanations for the lack of interest they encountered in their peers on campus.

“I think there is definitely some stigma that Beyond Coal is just another green, hippie cause,” said Dannenberg. “But we’re not hippies by any means.”

There also looms the question of whether the campaign has realistic goals.

“I don’t think it’s likely that CU reaches 100 percent green energy within the next five years. We’re so limited by cost and availability,” Howlette said. “Still, it feels good because I’m actually working toward something really important.”

Despite the rewards, Howlette, who also works a part-time job and plans to apply to graduate schools in the spring, does not know if she will be able to participate in the campaign next semester.

“Before I did this, I don’t think I realized how much people put into campaigns like this. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes,” Howlette said.

Shiozaki, the campaign organizer, was trained by the Green Corps and is paid by the Sierra Club. A recent college graduate herself, she says she understands how much many college students have going on in their lives. Involvement, she says, requires small sacrifices.

“In the course of a year they [students] could be part of a core group of students that significantly change the direction of the energy economy not only for their campus, for Boulder, for Colorado but also for the country and the world The reason is that universities represent roughly five percent of the total electricity consumption in the United States. Should all the universities in this country decide that they demand clean energy for their campuses, or they want to be the leaders in researching and implementing new clean renewable energy sources, then we can really lead the way in this country. But it’s really easy to start right here on your own campus. It’s really easy to give a couple hours extra instead of watching TV. By focusing on what really matters this semester or throughout this next year they can make significant amounts of change that really affect the rest of the world. And it’s a skill-building opportunity that looks good on their resume, that puts them a step ahead of their peers by getting involved in things and meeting really cool people. Why wouldn’t you want to get involved?”

All reporting done by James Collector and Rob Herman

Sierra Student Coalitions CU Beyond Coal

Campaign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xegtRtG0Qp4

Here is a video of student coordinator Jennifer Greer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb3i4xd4UN8

What is it like to be a student involved in the Sierra Student Coalition’s CU Beyond Coal Campaign?

Other relevant links:

Council: Carbon-cutting plan needs a second look. – Daily Camera

Boulder cyclists ride against coal – The Daily Camera

Power Past Coal