How Green are Our Tritons?

 How Green are Our Tritons?

May 18, 2021

By: Andrew Wynn

Our modern world is plagued with many horrible things that make life really feel impossible sometimes. Raging pandemics, the climate crisis, and the political theater are just a few of the things that have made certain recent seasons feel absolutely unbearable. However, during those tragedies (both modern and Shakespearean definitions), life goes on. We need to continue living our lives, going to work, taking care of ourselves and our loved ones, etc… This season, I took a little dive into how community members of Eckerd College tackle the modern climate crisis through positive environmental action. 

At face value, we are undoubtedly a very environmentally conscious campus; however, how far into our actual lives does that extend? I sought out to do some digging into what is keeping Eckerd College community members from extending their activism from their phones and into their tangible action. The results? The vast majority of students said exactly what you would expect. “Life is busy”, “Don’t have time after work/internships”, and even “it's too hot outside.” These are just a few of the reasons students and community members are not always out working and loving along some of our gorgeous beaches in efforts to help love our home well. 

In efforts to fight this issue, I set up an online social media profile with the primary goal of trying to convince our Tritons to get to work outside on helping out our planet as a casual and regular part of their life. The goal was to glamorize the work that students do to highlight it as greatly beneficial, socially attractive, and even fun! The account created some original content; however, was primarily focused on highlighting the actions of those on campus to grow their interest in environmental activism. A few goals I had set for the account was at least 200 followers by the time of this being written, 5-10 uses of its created hashtag, and consistent student action highlights! 

This idea was largely inspired by the introduction of Amanda Gorman’s “Earthrise” (Ward, 2021).  This reading sparked something in me to consider the way we treat our home. We need to act and it needs to be attractive to act. The damage we do to this planet is not something we can comfortably sit with, it is something that we need to heal our home and give future generations a place to stay that is even a fraction as livable as that which we have inherited. Certainly we all recognize how hard it is to make these changes on large scales; however, change starts on the individual level and the attempt here was to get students to act more than usual with a sense of abundance of consideration and care for our planet just as Gorman speaks of in her poem.

Additionally, I took from Dan Kahan’s “Fixing the Nature Communication Failure” (Kahan, 2010). This article talks about how there is a huge lapse in the way we speak about environmental action and to get people into action, we need to be “marketing our science better.” My entire project revolved around changing how environmental action was “marketed” on campus and simply reconstructing discussions around how action was traditionally a large event. I wanted to redefine environmental action as a casual and daily activity for people. Simply changing their time from “beach cleanup day” to cleaning up the beach while there relaxing with friends. 

Largely speaking, the account was underwhelming to say the least. At the time of writing, I only have 135 followers, one reposted content and not a single use of the hashtag. To me, this is such a negative response that I believe it could not have been a simple lack of action. In fact, I saw many instances of environmental action within the community; however, none of them were posted with the intended hashtag. 

 

Overall, I attribute this considerable failure to the fact that I only ever promoted events that were already happening. I never created my own events. Largely, I feel that this resulted in the students who participated in regular activism continued doing so with or without the influence of my account and those who did not, were no more inspired to action than the usual which is not enough to get them up and moving. If I was to try this experiment again, I would certainly have incorporated more hands-on events or opportunities that would both get students out and involved and allow them to see the hashtag on their photos I wanted them to use. While the hashtag truly had no value aside from being able to track influenced participation, it was very important to me for that reason. No one using it means to me that no one was influenced to action by my account. This is not to say that no one was influenced to action; rather, that my account was not the primary resource for anyone.

In conclusion, the attempt to create the Greenest Tritons was a worthy first try; however, its considerable failure forces me to conclude that for proper influence in an in person community, I need to have appealed to my audience in person as well as online. Simply sticking with online was not enough accountability, influence, or motivation to change anything anyone was doing, especially during a busy finals season. 

For more info check out:

Kahan, D. (2010). Fixing the communications failure. Nature, 463(7279), 296–297. https://doi.org/10.1038/463296a 

Ward, B. (2021, March 15). Poet Amanda Gorman's 'Earthrise' climate change video " Yale Climate Connections. Yale Climate Connections. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/01/poet-amanda-gormans-earthrise-climate-change-video/.