By Suzie Hicks

There is a famous scene from the Netflix show “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” where, in order to clear an unruly crowd of reporters, one character approaches each person and asks earnestly, “Do you have a minute to talk about the environment?” 

His strategy works. The paparazzi retreat in discomfort. 

As someone with a prevalent case of social anxiety, I have never put interrupting strangers to talk about climate change at the top of my list of fun hobbies. There is a distinct look of dread in someone’s eyes when they realize you are trying to approach them with a clipboard. You can watch them try to desperately think of any excuse why they can’t engage, even before you’ve cleared the 10-foot boundary into their sphere of existence.

However, direct actions — petitioning, protesting, and boycotting — have historically been a powerful way to hold institutions accountable by disrupting the flow of everyday routine. At a major institution like Columbia University, students have more power than they think they do.

Last December, I spent a week with five other students loitering in the high-ceilinged halls of Teachers College, Columbia’s graduate school of education, confronting late-to-class shufflers and burnt-out Teaching Assistants to ask them to sign our climate action petition. 

The petition, penned by members of the school’s student-run sustainability task force, demanded that Teachers College do three things. First, Teacher’s College must make a public statement that they will not fund private prisons and fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. It is worth noting that Teachers College is not currently invested in these, but a public statement would bar them from doing so in the future.

Second, Teachers College must create a mandatory, college-wide training to create a more well-rounded understanding of climate change, its impacts, and the solutions at hand.

Third, Teachers College must upgrade their facilities to rely less on fossil fuels, improve waste management, and begin a composting program.

With two weeks before finals and winter break, we needed to make an unprecedented push to get enough signatures and visibility from the school. Like all climate-related issues, time was stacked against us. However, we had one major advantage: Columbia itself.

In 2019, Columbia created a program called Plan 2030, a sustainability roadmap for the university to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. In other words, they committed to reducing current greenhouse gas emissions while making other environmentally beneficial campus changes, evening out to a neutral impact.

Teachers College, however, isn’t part of this plan. Even though Columbia includes many different schools, Plan 2030 only includes the Morningside, Manhattanville, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory campuses. Even though its buildings sit directly across the street from the Morningside campus, Teachers College is on its own in designing a response. 

Because of this, student reactions to our petition were not lack of interest, but rather surprise that Teachers College had not already done more.

This presented an ideal opportunity. While Columbia made a public commitment in January 2021 to divest from fossil fuels, Teachers College has remained silent on whether it would allow such investments in the future.

This, along with the fact that all we asked our bundled-up colleagues to do was scan a QR code, helped us garner hundreds of signatures. The student body of Teachers College made it clear that as they learn how to teach ethically in a climate-altered world, so should their institution.

Our campaign got enough attention to schedule a meeting with the school’s president and provosts, thanks in part to the giant abstract painting we stationed in the building’s entryway.

In the meeting, Teachers College President Thomas Bailey was curious and receptive to our points, later responding by email that an interdepartmental working group focusing on literacy and awareness would be discussed with faculty leaders in February 2022 to address our demands. In fact, the sustainability task force is meeting with the entire faculty this Thursday. While this last correspondence ended with triumph for us, we realized shortly after that nothing was said about publicly committing to not invest in fossil fuels.

This is a great start, but we have a long way to go before our campaign is over. It is becoming clear to Teachers College administrators that not taking a stance on climate change will be a bad look, especially as its effects worsen before our eyes. We, as students, must keep making as much noise as possible to close the gap between promise and action. 

Teachers College has a pressing responsibility to address the climate emergency because the places we call home — and the futures of many students — are at risk. The discomfort of disrupting our everyday lives to sign petitions and pressure administrators is far less than the discomfort we will likely experience from climate breakdown.

To ensure that Teachers College joins the cohort of academic institutions taking a public stand against climate change, I urge you to step out of your comfort zone and help us demand action. 

Teachers College students can sign the ongoing petition, and non-Teachers College students can join the campaign to raise awareness and build pressure on the Teachers College administration. To get involved, email cat2199@tc.columbia.edu and lg3163@tc.columbia.edu.

Suzie Hicks is an environmental educator and media maker in NYC, focusing on climate advocacy in children's media. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in climate and society at Columbia University.