To the Editor:
I am the Director of Piano Technology for the Conservatory but also serve as a council person for the city of Oberlin. This is my first term on council, and I chose to run for one of the seven seats because of the development issues facing the city and its lack of a viable energy conservation program. I am concerned about having a strong, local economy with an active downtown business district, a tax base that can support healthy infrastructure and good schools, and all the other things that make a town a safe and pleasant place to live. In case you haven't realized, I am decidedly green in my thinking.
I'm writing this letter to mention how fortunate the city of Oberlin is to have so many caring and hard working students helping as volunteers throughout the city and county. Tutoring in our schools, helping with free meal programs, working in community agricultural projects, living with seniors, building habitat for humanity homes, conducting surveys for the city...the list of volunteer efforts could go on for pages and is rewarding testimony to the students here that are not just committed to taking during their four years in Oberlin, but giving also.
And just around the corner awaits yet another opportunity for the college and its students to help Oberlin. I'm talking about the Environmental Science Center that is now in the active planning stages and which will provide a wonderful opportunity for town and gown people alike to experience the technologies that could provide for our needs and comforts in a sustainable future. More thanks in order here, and I extend them to my friends David Orr and Brad Masi, both of whom worked long and hard to make possible the funding and realization of the building.
I am afraid, however, that the people who need most to be inspired by the values that the Environmental Science Center will embody will never get close enough to activities and programs there to gain much of an appreciation for sustainable activity. These are likely the people I encounter as an elected official who have the hackneyed perception that environmentalists are idealistic dreamers and tree huggers completely out of touch with the dynamics that drive our society.
They are people that have subscribed to the myth that we and all other things in nature are resilient enough to rebound from the adverse impacts we inflict upon the natural systems that sustain us. All the environmental science centers of the world showcasing all their marvelously beneficial technologies won't effect any significant change unless we can convince these people to take another look at the way they live. To them, the environmental centers will always be an abstraction, apart from the profit oriented businesses of the "real world" where policy is all too often dictated by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh "ditto-heads".
So don't forget the mantra of the Earth Day movement, "Think globally, act locally." Continue to help Oberlin as wonderfully as you have in the past by providing valuable service and helping to change unhealthy perceptions. And while the Environmental Science Center can tell us how to harness the sun and wind, let's help the people that work and study there show everyone the need to do so.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 10; November 22, 1996
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