While the College of William and Mary celebrated the colorful Year of the Arts in 2024, administration is taking a more green approach this year. For 2025, the November Board of Visitors meeting announced a Year of the Environment theme. Students involved in environmental organizations on campus have mixed hopes and goals for this coming year, in their individual clubs as well as for the greater College community .
According to the College’s website, the designation was created to showcase the College’s commitment to safeguarding the health and resilience of the environment.
“The yearlong observance will focus on advancing sustainability efforts on campus and furthering William & Mary’s environmental impact around the world,” the College’s website reads.
Courtney Hand ’25 is the president of Citizens Climate Lobby and has been with the organization since its creation in her freshman year. CCL is a nonpartisan climate lobbying organization that works to enact common sense climate policies into legislation, with an emphasis on policies that would be appealing to Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike. Every year, there is a lobbying conference in June where students can go and lobby their representatives in person, complete with prior training.
Hand also works in the Office of Sustainability, which has not had a director of sustainability for a few years. Because of this, she hopes the Year of Sustainability will shine a spotlight on the realities of green efforts at the College, and what could be improved.
Though the College is pledging to put an emphasis on environmental efforts this year, Hand already sees positive signs that people are involved in sustainability. The abundance of construction on campus is a negative, but there are plenty of students who care about enacting change.
“I think that’s what’s been really great is that the people that are engaged with sustainability on campus are like engaged wholeheartedly,” she said. “They’re engaged in like all aspects on campus are engaged in at least one club or the Sustainability Council or different parts of that so that people are very much in the know and are doing a lot.”
Raquel Mandojana ’25 is the primary contact for the College’s Student Environmental Action Coalition, which is a non-hierarchical organization that emphasizes accessibility. Any student can join even without majoring in environment and sustainability, and anyone can volunteer to lead a meeting. SEAC has a campus focus and an education focus, and does activities like campus cleanups every semester in collaboration with other clubs. They orient themselves on campus and participate in campus-wide environmental celebrations, such as the Earth Day Bash.
In terms of academics, Mandojana views the College as stacking up nicely in comparison to other institutions.
“I think that specifically the undergraduate programs have grown significantly even in my last like four years,” she said. “You know, when I first got here, they just had what is ENSP, two tracks, science and policy. And that was it in regards to major. But then they started plans for integrated conservation becoming a major. And there’s like the whole research program with that and that’s like really been growing a lot. And of course they’re going to have the marine science school.”
Even with the College’s sustainability courses, there are opportunities for even more growth.
“I know that there’s been talk about sustainability being put forth like a required concentration for an elective because we have ALV and those kinds of things. Doing one that is sustainability-oriented, so that requires, you know, I mean there’s so many different classes that would probably fall into that category so wouldn’t it be hard to have a class, but to put that as part of the curriculum,” Mandojana said.
Mandojana remembers the activities the campus held during the Year of the Arts and hopes 2025 looks similar.
“I think it’d be really cool to have environment-related activists or whatever, that kind of stuff. I know for us we’ve put on a few like faculty, information, Q&A sessions to talk about environmental careers and their journeys and stuff, which have been really informative. But I think it’d be really cool if William and Mary as a whole would get people outside of the school who work environment and have those kinds of panels or like informational talks, something like that. I think that would be really great,” she said.
In terms of how the College’s campus can improve upon sustainability, Hand would like to see more students show up at club events to learn more about the options available. Even for students who aren’t going to make environmental policy or activism their life’s work, it can still be beneficial to think about it a little more when it’s visible in front of them.
After recent climate disasters such as the wildfires in Los Angeles, an emphasis on the environment feels timely for campus. Mandojana believes in staying informed, and sees education as the inception for movements and real change. Finding an avenue within the realm of sustainability that one is passionate about and sticking with that is a good way to start for Mandojana, because that can lead to tangible results.
Taking an environmental class changed the priorities in Hand’s life and steered her towards a passion for the environment, and she urges all students to dip their toes into the subject of sustainability. Aside from coursework, Hand recommends staying up to date with current events and trying to keep one’s eyes fixed on the facts throughout the thick fog of overwhelm and despair.
“A lot of people, when they feel hopeless, they just disengage with material and they don’t want to check on it,” she said. “Like I know myself, I can get overwhelmed by things and it’s just easier to look away sometimes. But I think it’s really important to pay attention to the kind of policy that’s being passed and what’s actually happening. Keeping up to date with the news and other reliable sources that you have access to, I think is also important.”
