by Natasha Rubright

The New Jersey Pinelands was the country’s first National Reserve, and my hometown is right on the edge of it. The difference between a National Park and a National Reserve is not necessarily in value, but in use; a Reserve can be used for commercial purposes as long as those purposes are responsible and do not harm the biosphere. This difference is clear to the people in my town. Our elementary schools take trips down roads covered in packed sand to cranberry bogs run by Ocean Spray, not 27 miles from the Jersey Shore. There my classmates and I picked our own cranberries and learned about the pockets of fresh water called aquifers that fill up the bogs. Talk to any third grader at Milton H Allen Elementary School and they’ll be able to tell you about how the ocean used to cover our town and left it covered in sand and blueberry bushes. People call us Pinies; these woods are part of who we are.

Oh, and they’re building a pipeline through them.

Despite such a strong connection to nature–in New Jersey, no less, where people are packed in at a higher population density than they are in India–the people in my town care about the environment less than they do about Facebook drama. We have recycling bins in our schools right next to trashcans full of plastic water bottles. Our environmental science classes barely touch upon pollution or energy conservation. While our third graders travel to the bogs and chew on berries they pick there, their parents elect officials that have decided to build a pipeline right below. Discussions about the environment are about business in my town, not the fact that it will be underwater again, soon, if global warming continues.

When I applied to be an EcoRep for Brittany Hall, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I expected all of the residents  to react to environmentalism like my hometown: with apathy, shortsightedness, and sometimes hostility. Instead, I have been shocked by the eagerness of NYU’s residents since Brittany’s first tabling event, where they participated with enthusiasm in the Recycling Game. One of my roommates came from a place where they don’t recycle, and now every week I bring our combined foodscraps to the community collection bins at the Union Square Greenmarket.

During the annual NYUnplugged energy competition for residence halls, the EcoReps of Brittany Hall led efforts to educate residences around energy consumption and waste. On President’s Day, when we all had off from school and many would have decided to sleep in, Brittany hosted a “Smoothie Bike” event and had a line of residents waiting to use their own energy to power the bike blender. The other EcoReps for our hall and I put in hard work, for sure, to make Brittany save energy this month. We had residents fill out pledges, planned events and went grocery shopping for smoothie supplies. But Brittany didn’t place high on the leaderboard because of us. Our residents were not only willing, but excited to save energy and compete. Even when people are rushing through the lobby, they pull out an earbud to hear a fact about energy consumption or to read a sign about the need to eliminate water bottle waste. It’s incredible, and in such sharp contrast to my small New Jersey hometown that I have hope for not only the environmental future of NYU, but also for the example we can set for New York City and beyond.

Natasha Rubright is a first year student in Gallatin studying the way that individuals and communities interact with institutions of power, with the goal of being a civil rights lawyer or community activist. She is a member of Roosevelt Institute and a WYSE mentor, as well as an EcoRep for Brittany Hall. Natasha loves reading, writing, art, and engaging people with politics.