In unpredictable April showers, community members participated in the 28th annual Eco Day, organized by Students for Environmental Action Club (SEA) and Ms. Jenn Rinehart, instructor in environmental science, and Ms. Jennifer Likar, instructor in biology. This year’s Eco Day included a keynote speech by Dr. Jacquelyn Gill, bookended by morning and afternoon workshops led by faculty, staff, and students.

This year, the Eco Day committee made significant changes to past years’ programming. Rather than being randomly assigned to activities with their advisory groups, students chose from a variety of workshops based on their interests.

Official Eco Day programming began on Wednesday evening with an environmental trivia game led by the Quiz Bowl club and a debate on climate change led by the Republicans, Democrats, and Hotchkiss Political Union. On Thursday, students were required to choose one activity from among Sunrise Sessions, Morning Moments, and Afternoon Awesomeness, including beekeeping, chicken butchery, riverfront restoration, poetry, and mountain biking trail maintenance.

SEA board members worked closely with faculty advisors and student clubs to organize the workshops. Nick Chang ’24, co-head of SEA, said, “I think our board did an excellent job adding varied opportunities, including service and education, to our workshop catalog. None of it could have been done without a group effort within the organizing team and from the school community.”

Following the morning sessions, the community welcomed keynote speaker Dr. Gill, an internationally recognized paleontologist and associate professor of the Climate Change Institute and the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine in Orono, where she directs the BEAST (Biodiversity and Environments Across Space and Time) lab. In her presentation “Think like a Musk Ox: Fighting Climate Despair like an Ice Age Survivor,” Dr. Gill shared her research on paleo-climatology and recounted stories from her Arctic exploration, where, working with ivory hunters, she studied animals and plants recovered from melted permafrost.

Ms. Rinehart said, “It’s crucial that we know the facts about climate change and understand the system that supports our existence on this planet. At the same time, we must move beyond anxiety, despair, and polarizing rhetoric to accept our responsibility as stewards. There are solutions and there is hope. The goal of Eco Day needs to be centered on educating our community. Then, we can all be empowered to take meaningful steps forward.”