NEW LONDON – Each year, seven Connecticut College students are selected to live in Earth House, Connecticut College’s sustainable living dorm.
Students are selected based on their commitment to ecological living and sustainable practices.
“Earth House represents a place where students can practice sustainability in all its forms: social justice, economic well-being and environmental stewardship,” said Sara Rothenberger, assistant dean of residential life.
During a visit to Astana in March, light reflects off the hardwood floor in the living room, where the walls are painted with nature murals and poems that challenge authority.
“Mostly, we compost and the people who live here are involved in sustainable things around campus. I’m into outdoor adventure,” said senior Ben Jorgensen-Duffy.
He leads the college’s Outdoor Adventures Club.
Some Earth House residents work in the college’s sprout garden, planting, growing and maintaining crops for distribution to the college’s dining service as well as the New London community.
In 2013, students won a battle with the college administration to keep the painted walls, which were originally slated for removal.
“This is historically an exception to the rule of not painting on walls. In 2013, they were trying to draw on them. They got a bit of a shock, and since then they’ve let us do whatever we want here,” Jorgensen-Duffy said.
Earth House served as a space where students could bring sustainability together with activism. Alumnus Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano was a senior in 2014 when he lived in Earth House.
Coming from Colombia, she said living in the dorms allowed her to be part of a community in the United States
Pacheco Bejarano said that finding Earth House allowed her to belong to a community that cares about and takes action on sustainability.
“At Earth House, we had parties and dinners, but we also organized activism on campus. It was a meeting space for connecting with earth and soil, but also for intentional ways of building communal life and mobilizing to demand climate and social justice at different levels through collective action,” he added.
In the experience of both Pacheco Bejarano and Jorgensen-Duffy, the house that sat on the north end of campus was home.
“It’s a bit different but it’s still very pleasant to live in,” Jorgensen-Duffy said.
Pacheco Bejarano’s activism in college began when he became concerned about the dining hall’s purchase of Chiquita bananas, formerly the United Fruit Company, which has a history of racial discrimination, toxic pesticide use, and was even convicted in 2007 of engaging in “transactions,” according to the Department of Justice. With Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
“I was concerned that the dining hall was serving Chiquita bananas, a company formerly known as the United Fruit Company, known for financing military dictators in Caribbean countries, including Colombia, where I’m from,” he said.
Pacheco Bejarano and his classmates initially faced student backlash.
“I found a lot of resistance,” he said.
A 2014 film, “Grown to Be Sold”, made by him and his classmate, Phebe Pearson, documents the history of the Chiquita banana and the journey they and their activist classmates took to raise awareness within the student body.
Throughout the movement, Earth House was where students gathered to strategize and plan action.
“Earth House has become the meeting space for the many collective actions we organize to raise awareness,” says Pacheco Bejarano.
Today, Earth House residents still share that sentiment for political and environmental radical change.
Assistant Dean Rothenberger’s vision for Earth House will strengthen the dorm’s commitment to sustainability. He believes that both buildings should practice sustainability with students.
“In the future I would like to see renovations to the space that make it more economically and environmentally sustainable. For example, low flow toilets, weather efficient windows, rain catchment systems,” he said.
Two months after graduation, Jorgensen-Duffy witnessed student protests in response to the resignation of Rodmon King, the former dean of Equity and Inclusion, and calls for Kathryn Bergeron to resign, marking a pivotal moment in the school’s history, but her and Earth House’s legacy at the college.
“I think what’s happening on campus right now is really important, and I’m hoping that when I graduate, I feel like my class, me personally, and the people I’m working with right now are doing something this year. It actually makes a real difference and creates some kind of institutional progress to continue to build and change the systems we have in place,” he said.
t.wright@theday.com