Skidmore College
EN-3: Student Life

The Sustainability Commission (SuCo) is the primary student commission responsible for educating and collaborating with students, the Student Government Association (SGA), faculty, staff, and administration with the intent to advance the College's commitment to sustainability. SuCo devotes itself to embracing the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainability by implementing policies that address campus challenges. SuCo will help coordinate and support student, faculty, staff, and administrative groups that work on sustainability-based initiatives. This group channels student voice, ideas, and concerns into the development of Skidmore's sustainability efforts by working closely with the Sustainability Office, the Campus Sustainability Subcommittee, and any other relevant groups. This committee helps streamline student efforts and campus initiatives addressing the goals of the Campus Sustainability Plan. SuCo ultimately integrates student insight and propose policy recommendations to encourage Skidmore to reach its full potential while advocating for an inclusive, sustainable community.

The Environmental Action Club (EAC) is a student-based group committed to sustainability initiatives on campus, in the community, nationally, and worldwide. EAC’s goal is a 100% clean energy future, and an ecologically, socially, and economically just world. To work towards this goal, the EAC focuses on four general themes - energy, transportation, waste, and food issues. They plan events, campaigns, projects and more around these issues to generate awareness and inspire change.

In April 2009, volunteers from the Environmental Action Club, with the support of Facilities Services, broke ground to create the Skidmore College Student Garden. In 2014, there was an opportunity to bring the garden to a more central, visible location on campus. Students, staff, and faculty worked together to find a suitable location for the new garden and chose Wiecking Green. The new location is more accessible, visible, and inviting to our campus community and visitors of the College. Students also chose to re-name the garden to the Skidmore Community Garden, representative of the garden's mission to be an inclusiveness space for all. Students, staff, faculty, and other community members are always welcome to enjoy the garden space as a place for rest, reflection, recreation, and learning.

The garden supplies local food, grown using organic practices, to Skidmore's dining hall. It facilitates a connection to, and appreciation for, the food that we eat, and offers hands-on learning opportunities for the Skidmore community. The garden provides an outlet for community members interested in environmental issues, social justice, and economic development to learn about the local food movement and the ecology of food. The garden has produced over 6,500 lbs of food since 2009. The garden hosts an annual Harvest Dinner each fall that serves over 250 meals made almost entirely of locally-sourced food and coordinates a spring fundraising concert called Beats for Beets.

The Saratoga CSA is Skidmore's on-campus CSA. The CSA, which is fulfilled by 9 Miles East Farm, is available to students, faculty, and staff, and runs for 12 weeks every fall. Weekly CSA pick-ups occur in our dining hall atrium.

https://www.skidmore.edu/sustainability/programs/communitygarden.php

Skidmore FeelGood- FeelGood youth movement committed to ending world hunger in our lifetime. FeelGood students run a non-profit deli specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches. 100% of proceeds are invested in organizations sustainably eradicating global hunger. The deli is open in our student union at least once per week throughout the academic year.

Many of the programs coordinated through the Sustainability Office are student-run enterprises. For instance, the garden manager is involved in budget management and coordinates invoices, payments, and garden expenses during the growing season.

Saratoga Sustainability Fair: Skidmore hosted the inaugural Saratoga Sustainability Fair in April 2019 with our community partners, Sustainable Saratoga. The fair included an expo hall with over 30 community organizations, businesses, and student groups, a keynote lecture, an EV car show, a campus sustainability tour, and an afternoon of concurrent workshops led by faculty, staff, students, and experts in our local community.

Skidmore Unplugged, the College's annual three-week energy reduction competition, always includes a series of energy-related lectures and dialogues with sustainability leaders, community organizers, and faculty members. The 2015 Skidmore Unplugged series included keynote lectures with former government officials, regional community organizers, and included dialogues and panel discussions between faculty, staff, and students.

The Tang Teaching Museum organizes numerous events and exhibitions related to sustainability. Examples include:
- Like Sugar: Our taste for sweetness is a powerful force. It is one of the foundations of empires; of slavery; of ecological devastation; and of modern health epidemics and food injustice. Even knowing this, we love it. Flowers and fruits seduce birds and insects with their nectars; for human beings, sugar starts as cane, beets, or corn, and people have harvested and manipulated and packaged it to suit consumers’ fancies. We continually construct and reconstruct its meanings. Like Sugar will explore both the problematic and the joyful aspects of sugar, complicating our view of how this multi-layered substance affects us. Through artwork by contemporary artists such as Vik Muniz, Julia Jacquette, Zineb Sedira, Laurie Simmons, and others; historical materials such as maps, prints, and books; and material culture such as cane-cutting tools and sugar dishes, the show will raise questions and provide a space for dialogue about sugar in our lives.

The Skidmore College Outing Club organizes outing trips nearly every weekend during the academic year. Outings include rock climbing, hiking, snow boarding, camping, and more. The Outing Club increases access to outdoor activities by providing necessary equipment to anyone in need. Club members help decide and plan each trip. The purpose of the club is to provide all students with the opportunity to take part in a variety of activities in the outdoors and to make professional training available to those who wish to further their knowledge of wilderness skills.

One-quarter of the Human Dilemmas first-year seminar focuses on humans in relation to the natural world. Learning objectives push students to explore: Who am I?; What exactly am I?; What is my relationship to others?; and What is my responsibility to them and to the world?. "Human Dilemmas" challenge students’ conventional assumptions surrounding these predicaments as we focus our attention on interdisciplinary readings, critical thinking, and academic inquiry. Debates, field trips, and writing will move us toward an understanding of what it means to be human in our contemporary world.

Each of the Sustainability Office's student-run programs provides our students with opportunities to learn sustainable life skills. For instance, Skidmore Unplugged provides opportunities for students to learn how to adopt more sustainable habits, our compost program teaches students how to responsibly manage food waste while also learning tactcis to reduce food waste, and our garden program teaches students how to grow food and manage a sustainable business. Additionally, the Low-Impact Dining program teaches students what to consider when making sustainable food choices.

The Sustainability Office offers 15 paid student leadership positions each semester and offers three paid student positions during the summer. Student positions include Compost Manager, North Woods Steward, BikeMore Manager, Community Garden Manager, Sustainability Representative, and Low-Impact Dining Manager.

Feedmore- Feedmore is a hunger-relief program that collects surplus food from the Skidmore dining hall and delivers it to local soup kitchens and food pantries. The program delivered over 3,500 lbs. of food to local service organizations since 2014.