Williams College
EN-3: Student Life

Many student organizations are sustainability-centered with goals such as reducing food waste, carbon emissions, or choosing environmentally friendly investments. These groups pursue their goals by hosting events, educating via social media pages, posting signage around campus, and recruiting members to join their initiatives across campus. These groups often partner closely with Dining Services, Center for Environmental Studies, Zilkha Center, or Facilities. Some groups are as follows: Williams Environmental Council (WEC) which hosts events, starts conversations, and sometimes advocates for policy change as it relates to Environmental issues. Divest Williams is working to convince the college to divest from fossil fuel investments. Williams Recovery of All Perishable Surplus (WRAPS) takes extra food and packages it into individual meals. The meals are then delivered to food-insecure community partners in North Adams each week in order to combat food insecurity and food waste at the same time. Information on initiatives can be found here: https://sustainability.williams.edu/getting-involved-on-campus/organizations/

The Williams Sustainable growers maintains two organic gardens on campus. The group also aims to promote awareness of and access to sustainable food and agriculture. The student organization hosts work parties and harvests for group meals, student events around campus, and local food banks. We also have the Class of '66 Environmental Center which participates in the living building challenge, so thirty-five percent of the building’s site is devoted to food production. On site, organic agriculture is practiced to grow annual and perennial vegetables, high- and low-bush berries, herbs, and fruit trees.
https://learning-in-action.williams.edu/fieldwork/by-sector/health-wellness/williams-sustainable-growers/

Speaker series: Each week during the semester, a vegetarian lunch prepared by Williams students is served to ~100 guests, followed by a talk on an environmental topic. Speakers are drawn from both the student body and faculty of Williams, as well as from local farms and organizations.
https://ces.williams.edu/features/log-lunch-lectures/

WCMA hosts Object Lab every semester which connects Williams College courses to the museums collections. Object Lab has connected with several courses focused on sustainability and environmental justice including an Environmental Ethnography course, a Plant Botany course, and a GIS class that uses GIS to look at changing landscapes.

WCMA also organized New Ecologies a virtual program series that ran from 2020-2021 that brought together artists, thinkers, and practitioners working across disciplines—many connected directly to the environs of the Berkshire community where the Williams College Museum of Art is located—in conversations that explored the interdisciplinary connections between art, community, humanity, and environment. These programs included conversations on landscape and sustenance/sustainability.

In 2020, WCMA organized the exhibition Landmarks, a survey of the museum’s photography collection that explored how human beings have used photo processes to orient and define themselves in relation to the natural and built environment.

Finally, each summer the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives has one internship position for a writer or artist in residence who focuses on sustainability. In the summer or the fall, these artists showcase their work to the campus community.

The Williams Outing Club, founded in 1915, is the largest student organization at Williams with over 750 student, faculty and staff members. Their mission is to support outdoor activities at Williams and to make the outdoors accessible to everyone, regardless of level of experience. They teach Leave No Trace principles to all their student leaders to implement in the field.

WOC offers a wide variety of events, trips, and activities throughout the year, including regular sunrise hikes, polar bear swims, campouts, indoor climbing, and PE classes as well as many longer trips and other activities. Special events every year include Mountain Day, Winter Carnival, and the WOOLF outdoor orientation program for first-years.
https://woc.williams.edu/

The Sustainable Living Lab (SLL) offers students interested in sustainable living an opportunity to practice the lessons they’ve learned in their classrooms in a supportive dorm community. The SLL encourages residents to prioritize behavioral changes that would decrease their carbon footprints from the source so they can be more aware of the impact of daily consumption behaviors. We recognize that building, maintaining, and supporting an intentional community around student sustainability and environmental efforts take a considerable amount of mutual understanding, so community-building is particularly important to the overall house mission. We hope that the SLL will push the envelope on how students can enact change for a more optimistic carbon future.

The SLL is Williams’s first Theme/Affinity/Program/Special Interest (TAPSI) house and is supported by staff at the Zilkha Center and the Office of Campus Life. Previous events that the SLL has co-facilitated include the Mohawk Forest gift exchange, apple cider-pressing, and a film screening.
https://williamsrecord.com/458235/features/tapsi-housing-begins-with-single-sustainability-themed-house/

The Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives hires over 20 interns throughout the academic year and 7-10 over the summer. Each intern has the opportunity to focus on sustainability projects that impact our campus community in a collaborative and self-directed way.

Some examples of positions available include:
Winter Blitz intern - Student intern who coordinates annual community winterization event that provides services aimed at low-income and elderly community members who need help keeping their homes warm.
First-year education interns - Student interns who are helping develop training modules for all incoming first-year students to understand sustainability on campus and how they can participate.

We also have hosted a Communications intern (focused on sustainability initiatives), a STARS intern, Zero Waste interns, Eco-advisers, an Environmental Center Landscape Intern, Sustainable Food interns, an International Education intern, a Community Engagement Intern, and a Cool Food Pledge intern.
https://sustainability.williams.edu/zilkha-center-2/staff/

"I pledge to explore and consider the social, economic, and environmental consequences of my decisions and to use the knowledge I gained at Williams to improve the quality of life for current and future generations in my community and beyond.”

Pledge was created & approved in January 2022 in collaboration with the ‘68 Center for Career Exploration. We are currently in the process of deciding how to implement it.

The Purple Bike Coalition (PBC) is Williams College’s free bike service organization. Run and staffed by students, the program offers free bike repair and rental services to students, faculty, and staff. It is also a place to learn how to repair your own bike and build new skills.