Student Leadership and Engagement

Student Clubs

Climate Justice Coalition

The Climate Justice Coalition (CJC) is a group of students working to educate the campus community on climate justice and climate change-related issues, both locally and globally. Climate justice is the understanding that the climate crisis affects communities disproportionately-marginalized and oppressed people are more harmed by climate change. Alongside education, CJC works to build solidarity and action through collaboration with other on-campus activist groups and faculty. They have helped put on events such as a teach-in and fundraiser for queer and trans youth affected by hurricanes in Puerto Rico and Florida, fossil fuel divestment awareness, food justice initiatives, and most recently a community art collaboration during Green Week. Come get involved!

Aquaponics Club

Aquaponics Club is a sustainable agricultural club that grows fish and plants together in an efficient indoor system. Aquaponics is a system of aquaculture in which the waste produced by fish supplies nutrients for plants grown hydroponically, which in turn purify the water for the fish. The club grows lettuce, basil, mint, tomatoes, kale, and more in a state-of-the-art aquaponics system in the Taylor Science Center’s greenhouse complex. Club members help feed the fish, monitor the system, plant seedlings, and harvest veggies. The produce grown by the club is donated to local food pantries or sold back to the community with proceeds going to urban farming charities. 

Slow Food

Slow Food Hamilton College is a local chapter of a national organization dedicated to helping students and their local community understand more about sustainable food systems (slow food being the opposite of “fast food”). Through our relationships with local farms, growers, and markets, Slow Food allows access to the behind the scenes of the local food processes that interweave with Hamilton College and the surrounding area. We organize trips to farms like Jones Family Farm, Fruit of the Fungi, and Common Thread in order to start conversation and spark attention. We also collaborate with other groups on campus to organize on-campus events along that theme (examples include pumpkin carving with the Wellin, food share programs through Community Pantry, and volunteering opportunities with HAVOC). Slow Food also often includes cooking! At every location we visit, we purchase some products with which we can cook communally, in order to reinforce the sense of community that slow food processes can engender.

Plants @ Hamilton

Plants @ Hamilton provides a space for lovers of all flora, whether their interests lie in botany, horticulture, farming, other plant sciences, and even the simple mission of keeping one plant alive. The club provides weekly activities that allow one to participate in adopting a new plant or a fun plant activity. The club is eco-conscious, paper free, and uses recycled materials. The recycled material includes potting, propagation of plants, and science lab equipment. Plant club gives homes to propagate plants for all and helps to reduce waste on Hamilton College campus.

Student Leadership

Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators

Hamilton Sustainability Coordinators (HSC) are students who work for the Environmental Protection, Safety and Sustainability Office to plan and implement sustainability initiatives undertaken by the College, particularly student-facing projects. They also represent a bridge between all students and their elected representatives on Student Assembly. Founded in 2004 as the Recycling Task Force, HSC changed its name in 2018 to reflect the expansion of its mission beyond waste management. Coordinators are regularly involved in and/or facilitate dorm composting, reforestation plot/pollinator habitat management, and community education and outreach. HSCers are mentored by Sara Soika and Brian Hansen and may be contacted at hsc@hamilton.edu.

Harvest

Harvest is Hamilton’s student-run, on-campus food salvage program. Over the course of the 2022-2023 school year, over one hundred student volunteers packaged 12,322 pounds of excess dining hall food for our eight community partners. By reducing food waste and feeding our community, Harvest is a program that is both environmentally and socially beneficial. 

 

Alternative Breaks

Alternative Breaks (AXB) is a volunteer organization that plans service-based trips during academic breaks. During these trips, Hamilton students participate in service projects at sites across the Midwest and East Coast from Ohio to North Carolina. AXB is dedicated to sustainability focused service projects related to environmental justice, food justice, and environmental disaster relief projects (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc). During the 2023 spring break, ten students from Hamilton went to Paducah, Kentucky for a week to assist in tornado disaster relief projects in the community, helping to repair damaged homes. During fall break, students also went on two trips to Syracuse to volunteer in local food pantries to help combat food injustice.

Summer Sustainability Internship

The Environmental Protection, Safety and Sustainability Office hires several students each summer to both advance Hamilton’s sustainability initiatives and provide experiential opportunities to inform and enhance participants’ future career interests. Three former sustainability interns (now graduates) are leading sustainability efforts on other college campuses, including:

• Jennifer Kleindienst ’09: Director of Sustainability, Wesleyan University

• Olivia Shehan ’18: Sustainability Coordinator, Wellesley College

• Hayley Berliner ’19:  Sustainability Coordinator, Trinity College