The Student Sustainability Town Hall on April 18, 2024. From left to right: Jon-Marc Burgess, Cheska Pangilinan, Mick Dalrymple, Ellen Dux, Dr. Jill Sohm and Effie Turnbull Sanders. (Photo by Shruthi Narayanan)
The third annual Student Sustainability Town Hall on Thursday allowed additional time for a student Q&A with university officials and faculty. Like the two previous iterations of the event, the meeting was hosted in collaboration with student groups, the Student Sustainability Committee and the Environmental Student Assembly (ESA).
After a brief introduction featuring a video from President Carol Folt on Assignment: Earth’s 27 goals, panelist introductions and a group discussion, the floor was opened for students and other audience members to ask questions.
The allotted time for questions was significantly increased from previous years, according to Cheska Pangilinan, the social and events coordinator of the Student Sustainability Committee and one of two moderators.
“The main reason why we host this town hall every year is because students want to know what’s going on in terms of USC sustainability,” Pangilinan, a senior environmental studies major, said. “We were able to achieve that because the discussion was driven by the audience. In previous years, we had a lot of questions from moderators […] also, we had more panelists last year.”
Shivi Anand, a global geo design major, was one of the people who asked questions during the session, asking about the 2028 deadline of USC’s Assignment: Earth initiative.
“Just sitting here in the sustainability hub and feeling like there’s such a big community around it and [knowing that] people in power generally care,” Anand said, “There’s something very inspiring about that.”
Panelist Effie Turnbull Sanders echoed the sentiment, saying she felt inspired from what the audience members were saying.
“My favorite part of the panel was just the opportunity to hear what the students’ concerns are and how they’re thinking about their role in helping USC meet its sustainability goals,” Sanders said. “That was exciting to see students that were taking their free time to come and participate in the dialogue.”
Student engagement with panelists was one of the main goals of the event, according to Jon-Marc Burgess, the ESA advocacy liaison and the other moderator for the event.
“It’s a town hall for a reason. We want the students to be engaged with the panelists,” Burgess said, emphasizing the importance of community participation. “We want them to ask pertinent questions that they have related to sustainability, and to just give […] space to the panelists to be transparent, which is one of the things that we advocate for in ESA.”
Other initiatives from the Sustainability Hub and Assignment: Earth brought up during the panel included the “Super Six for Sustainability,” a list of six actions introduced in spring 2023 that USC students can take to reduce their impact on the environment.
“Last year, we were like, now we have to get very specific about telling people exactly what they […] can choose to do to change their behaviors to be more sustainable,” panelist and Associate Director of the Office of Sustainability Ellen Dux said in an interview conducted after the town hall. “This is not an all inclusive list, but we were trying to make it snappy so people could remember ‘Super Six for Sustainability.’”
The other panelists were Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple and Jill Sohm, the environmental studies program director and associate professor of environmental studies.
Sohm discussed what she felt was the real motive behind an initiative to increase the amount of sustainability courses.
“The overall goal, which is stated in our aspirations for Assignment: Earth, is that every student at USC is getting sustainability education from the center in their curriculum,” Sohm said during the panel. “And the more we can encourage faculty to incorporate sustainability in their classes, the more we can increase the chance that a student is going to experience that type of education while they’re here at USC.”
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