By Jenna Glat ’15

Last fall, I enrolled in a fascinating Geography course called “Arctic Transformations,” taught by Professor Jessica Graybill. I assumed we would be learning about indigenous cultures, oil and gas, and climate change affecting the region, but little did I know how much this course would have opened my eyes to the environmental horrors occurring in the polar regions of our Earth. While there are many potential economic benefits that will impact nearly every other region of the globe, the harmful effects on indigenous communities outweigh the positive possibilities.

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By Jenna Glat ’15

As global temperatures rise, ocean levels are rising and weather is becoming more extreme throughout the world. Here on campus, changes have been noticeable: a surprisingly warm and sunny September, an overly rainy summer, and a hurricane in the fall of 2012. Many students, especially upperclassmen who live in the Newell or Parker apartments, are aware that flooding on lower-campus is becoming much more common, putting student housing at risk. The fields adjacent to Taylor Lake constantly flood due to runoff from the upper hill, and the Community Garden on College Street was destroyed twice this summer alone. As the “100-year flood,” or the flood that only has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year (we’ve seen 3 “100-year floods” in the last 5 years), increases, student and faculty planning committees have begun to plan for the future of Colgate in a warmer climate.

In the 2011-2012 academic year, President Jeffery Herbst began appointing special groups to map out the troublesome areas of campus and to replace them with potential new sites for student housing, academic buildings, and extracurricular space. The Advisory and Planning Committee, or APC, working with the architecture and planning firm Sazaki Associates, has released various presentations to the public on their website, presenting their ideas for our campus.

While the Campus Master Plan group is working on improving many different aspects of campus, one of their goals is to enhance campus systems by attacking the floodplain, which makes up much of lower campus. Their goal is to remove the apartments from their current location, and to separate Taylor Lake from Payne Creek. By rerouting the water, flooding concerns would reduce water buildup on campus as well as turn the campus into a functional arboretum. The campus planners estimate that the annual impervious runoff volume from campus is a whopping 37,430,667 gallons of water. This is roughly twice the volume of Taylor Lake, which explains why flooding is such a concern. Additional goals of the planning are to enhance campus movement, both by pedestrians and vehicles; to promote a community with the Village; and to develop a more compact campus.

It will be very interesting to see what happens at Colgate in the years to come. While many of us will no longer be on campus to see the brunt of the renovations and redesigning, as the time frame for the improvements is 10-15 years, the changes will likely impact thousands of new students and will hopefully allow Colgate to successfully adapt to the effects of climate change. It is important to note that the planners are keeping sustainability in mind while they design these developments; they intend to change campus in the greenest way as possible.

If students are interested in more information, they can check out www.colgatemasterplan.com for detailed presentations on proposed changes and for the opportunity to submit feedback. The campus community is constantly being consulted in order to bring about the best changes, so keep an eye out for opportunities to meet with the planning committee and to submit input!

By Jenna Glat ’14

“You’re sure you don’t want to go to school in Florida?” asked my grandmother upon hearing of my decision to apply as an early decision applicant to Colgate University. No, she didn’t ask me this in hopes of me being closer to her for the next four years of my life. Like many, she was aware of the fact that Colgate and the Central New York (CNY) area as a whole is notorious for some of the worst winter weather in the Northeast. I enthusiastically shook my head “no” and crossed my fingers that an acceptance letter would arrive in a few weeks.

Fast forward to the middle of October in the following year. I had just finished a regular day of classes at Colgate, and returned to my residence hall to relax before I would meet my friends for dinner and start my assignments for the night. Sitting down at my worn, scratched desk, with the memories of those before me etched in tiny letters, I flipped open my computer and opened up the Internet – the perfect distraction from my schoolwork. Unlike most students, I didn’t immediately go to Facebook, Twitter, or another social media site, but instead went to the webpage for the Weather Channel. As I checked the 10-day forecast for the Hamilton area, I let out a loud shriek, to the surprise of my roommate. In a short nine days, we were expected to receive snow showers – our first winter weather event of many to come. Read more

By Jenna Glat ’14

Here in Hamilton, NY, it is not very difficult to find a farm in the surrounding area. Simply leave campus heading in any direction and within a few miles and you will find yourself immersed in corn fields or cattle pasture. Many of these family farms have been in business for decades, and have been passed down from generation to generation. The owners often rely on the products of their farms for the sustenance of their families, and to do this they need the support of their surrounding communities.

There are two major, easy ways for us, as college students, to do this: through signing up for a CSA, or a Community-Supported Agriculture program, or through purchasing goods at the Farmer’s Market. In the 1960s a new fad was taking over parts of Japan, Switzerland, and Germany as a result of the changing food systems and questionable safety measures. CSAs began as groups of farmers and consumers came together to support local, healthy, socially equitable agriculture, according to the CSA Coalition. Read more

By Jenna Glat ’14

When one hears the phrase “sustainable eating,” one of the first methods that comes to mind is eating locally grown food. Many would be surprised to learn that there are some people who do not support the locavore lifestyle, and wonder, “what could possibly be wrong with eating fresh produce, supporting neighborhood farmers, and boosting the local economy?” Cost is typically one of the major factors involved in deciding whether to purchase the slightly more expensive local, organic food, or to simply buy conventional supermarket food. Are the higher costs of local food outweighed by its associated health benefits? Read more

As a result of all the flooding, the garden team has decided to focus most of our effort on the Community Garden Greenhouse. What began as an accessory location to simply hold about 50 extra tomato plants, has now become a refuge for transplanting crops that survived the flooding, and a way to reinvigorate our potential harvest. The greenhouse was originally purchased by Colgate, along with the land that it sits on, from a nursery and garden business that went out-of-business.

Pepper plants went wild, as seedlings and spirits shot up. Up until today, all plants were held in the largest pots we could get our hands on, thanks to a generous donation from Alcott’s Garden Center!  It quickly became clear, however, that we’d need more space and soil depth to really take advantage of the space.

Our root vegetable aspirations, only temporarily stunted by the floods, couldn’t be held in pots. We drew up plans for both a twenty foot and a forty foot long raised bed. With much appreciated emergency funding from Dean Hicks, we were able to finish construction today. Sustainability Office interns (Everett Spencer ’15, Jack Eiel ’15, Jenna Glat ’14, Kathryn Bacher ’14, and Allison Shafritz ’15) helped us for the day and we had a regular ole work party in the rain. If anyone’s curious how much labor it takes to build and fill sixty feet worth of deep raised beds – or how dirty you get in the process – get in touch with any of them.

Built out of larch from Preston Kelley’s lumber yard in Hubbardsville, the new greenhouse raised beds will hold carrots, turnips, chard, rutabagas, beans, radishes, lettuce and anything else we lost to the flooding that isn’t as viable or efficiently grown in pots. The sustainability interns even pushed through to finish most of the seeding today, so hopefully we’ll see some starts by the end of the weekend. This is the first season the Community Garden has made use of greenhouse space, and we hope to use it for everything from an extended growing season, to cultivating starts for the 2014 season before the last snows.