As the semester winds down and finals week ominously approaches, you might see a slight lull in Virginia student activism. Trust me, it won’t last long. But while students are studying, I thought I would recap the semester with some of the incredible highlights pulled off since January by the Virginia Student Environmental Coalition.
Students roared out of the gate in 2015, putting on the annual January VSEC Convergence before the semester even started. Sixty-five students from around the state came down to Richmond, Virginia for a weekend full of trainings on lobbying and Virginia policy. On MLK Day, they marched to meet Virginia’s Deputy Secretary of Natural Resources Evan Feinman, where they delivered 178 hand written letters opposing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Following the march, they descended upon the Virginia General Assembly, where they met and lobbied thirteen state delegates and senators on the Virginia Coastal Protection Act.
Three weeks after flexing their political muscles at the Capitol, VSEC was at it again in Fredericksburg at the University of Mary Washington putting on Virginia Power Shift 2015. This time more than 350 students gathered from across the state to discuss building student power, the intersectionality of our movements, and how we can make serious change in Virginia.
The first Virginia Power Shift in 2014 had 125 attendees, and ten short months later Virginia Power Shift 2015 almost tripled that number. A true testament to the growth of student activism in Virginia.
You’d think after Power Shift things would have cooled off for a bit. Wrong. Recharged and reinvigorated, dozens of VSEC students spent their spring breaks’ in the mountains of south west Virginia at Mountain Justice Spring Break. MJSB is a week long action camp centered around combating mountain top removal mining and fracking in Appalachia.
In late March, students at the University of Mary Washington began a 20 day sit-in of their President’s office demanding a subcommittee be formed to study the prospect of divestment. The sit-in ran peacefully for almost three weeks until the administration had state troopers remove students from their occupation, arresting two. The arrests sparked a flurry of action across the state and amplified the energy surrounding divestment in Virginia. There have been at least 5 divestment campaigns launched within the past month capitalizing on the recent momentum.
The Divest UMW sit-in fell within a larger wave of student divestment sit-ins that swept the nation, happening at schools such as Harvard, Yale, Tulane, Colorado University, Swarthmore and Wesleyan. Divest UMW students helped lead the way and provided experience and support to other schools beginning their sit-in.
Virginia students prefer to end on a bang, not a whimper. In two weeks you will find them closing out the semester with a group of more than thirty students riding their bikes across Virginia.They’ll be following the route of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline to help reinforce local resistance and grow the opposition. The ride will take 10 days and will take students from the mountains of Highland County to the coast of Virginia Beach. Each night students will meet with community members and learn their stories. The ride is used as a tool to draw attention to these stories and raise awareness of the dangers of this proposed pipeline.
The Virginia Student Environmental Coalition has had an inspiring semester of action, growth, and new possibilities. New alliances and friendships were formed. Power was built. And the horizons were broadened. The students of Virginia are ready to carry their success forward and change the course of Virginia for the better.
