Oh the Acronyms! KSEC and TERRA

One of the perks of becoming involved with groups on campus is the fact that not only do you get to know your fellow group members, but you also get the opportunity to meet and network with people outside your school who share your same interests and initiatives.

When the Transylvania Environmental Rights and Responsibilities Alliance attended Powershift—the first ever youth summit on climate change—last year in Washington DC, all the schools from Kentucky met up and decided to form a coalition to support and promote environmental initiatives as they pertain to Kentucky. We called the group KSEC—the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition.

This weekend my fellow TERRA members and I got to witness the beauty of an idea transforming into a tangible reality; we attended the first ever KSEC conference at Western Kentucky University. Though we sacrificed doing our homework for one weekend, we were able to network with likeminded people and collectively organize and plan for the future of our newly formed coalition. 7 schools from across the state were represented at the conference, so we were able to hear the cool environmental awareness events taking place on everyone’s campuses and discuss how we could go about implementing the same sorts of programs at our own school and how that would affect environmental policy in our state.

Speaking of cool environmental awareness events, TERRA just finished its 2 week PowerVote pledge campaign (www.powervote.org), a non-partisan national campaign to get one million students to pledge to keep clean and just energy a priority this election season. TERRA set up a table in Haupt Plaza, one of the most frequented spots on campus and the designated free speech zone, where students and faculty could come to get information on both presidential candidate’s stances and voting records on environmental issues. If the students then agreed that clean and just energy was important to them no matter who they were voting for, they could sign the Power Vote pledge. I saw the staunchest democrats and the most unwavering republicans, libertarians and undecideds all bending over my table scrawling their pledge willingly. It was a beautiful and empowering event, and WE GOT OVER 200 PLEDGES! Now…that doesn’t sound like a lot, but think about it in terms of percentages; at such a small school, that’s nearly 20% of our campus!

The student body’s increasing commitment to the issues I care about and their incredible support of my personal goals makes me prouder to be a Transylvania student every day (if that’s possible, as I was already pretty darn proud.)

And an update on my midterm: I got a B+…sometimes disappointments mysteriously reverse themselves =D.