Vassar Seed

Recently, Cora Kenfield, Director of Sustainability and Assistant Dean of Strategic Planning at Vassar College passed away. Today, Vassar held a memorial for her. Melissa Hoffmann shared the following speech with Vanessa Vazquez. Thank you to Izzy and Clay for supporting this speech and for offering edits. ❤️

Here is the video of the memorial: https://vimeo.com/event/2547161

Thanks Katie for sharing the link ❤️

My name is Melissa Hoffmann, I graduated in the class of 2021. Throughout my time at Vassar, I was involved in climate action research, carbon neutrality planning, and student activism. I remember first meeting Cora at her interview for the position of Director of Sustainability back in 2019. I was excited to learn about what Cora would bring to Vassar and how she would support student activism. Since her hiring, I have gotten to work with Cora closely and appreciate the incredible passion she had for sustainability and her dedication to climate action at Vassar. As a student, I worked with Cora through the grassroots student organization, Students for Equitable Environmental Decisions, SEED. As a group, we would have regular meetings with Cora to discuss carbon emission reduction and fossil fuel divestment projects we were working on, collaboration between students and the Office of Sustainability, and insights Cora had on how we could improve our impact and further our climate action goals. Discussions with Cora were always thoughtful, helpful, and exciting. While she was very busy working on her own projects, Cora always made time to talk with students, educate us about sustainability at Vassar, and encourage us to share our feedback.

Vanessa: Hi my name is Vanessa Vazquez, I graduated in 2021 and worked closely with Cora for a year. Her passion for climate action and creating a safer and better world was evident from my first day working with her. She pointed to a map in the Sustainability Office and told me every sustainable goal that the college works towards - that she works towards - helps advert the climate crisis. Cora cared so much about her work, her communities, and told me she saw a younger version of herself in some students. Although she was always busy, she made time to meet with students, develop our leadership skills, and share her passions and interests.

Vanessa: Cora was an amazing Director of Sustainability and made many ambitious climate goals and ideas for the college possible. We are grateful for having gotten to know Cora and as students, felt confident in the direction she was leading Vassar towards carbon neutrality. Cora was a wonderful presence to be around and radiated intelligence and joy in every conversation she had. She was an exciting storyteller and loved sharing her thoughts on life and her work. Her stories and parts of herself that she shared with us were sometimes surprising, but were always shared with a sense of humor. We want to thank her for being so candidly funny with the people she interacted with and leaving such a positively sassy and bold legacy.

Melissa: We are upset and angry to hear of Cora’s passing. Thoughts and prayers are not enough to stop members of the trans community from dying. Cora deserved a joyful, peaceful life, one in which she could be comfortable expressing her identity, desires, and personality. I don’t want the Vassar community to move on from her death without asking ourselves about the ways in which workplace culture and the world are harmful to transgender and gender non-conforming people. We must do better, particularly at an institution like Vassar that makes such strong claims and goals surrounding equity and inclusion for all. The use of transphobic language by the president and anti-trans comments made by close colleagues of Cora at an institution that prides itself on equity and inclusion must be called out. Covering up transphobia and hiding behind empty promises to learn and grow will just continue to enable a culture that threatens the safety of trans people.

Melissa: Cora’s passion and dedication to sustainability is an inspiration and motivation for me in my own work as a climate activist. I hope to honor her legacy by sharing her commitment to helping everyone understand the implications of institutional, corporate, and community decisions on global warming and climate collapse and ways we can act effectively.

https://vimeo.com/event/2547161

Cora Kenfield Memorial

Check out this event on Thursday!

Come to our fabulous film fest next Saturday!!!! We’re so excited and you should be too :) 🌱🍿🎥🍴🌍 💚

Vassar College !

After 9 years of student activism calling for fossil fuel divestment, Vassar has committed to no longer invest in private equity that focuses on fossil fuel investment. We believe even the smallest investment in fossil fuels is harmful, not only to the futures of students, staff, and faculty, but to the people of the global south and across the world that are already being impacted by climate change. Vassar is finally making a decision that puts the college on the right side of history. We will continue to hold Vassar accountable to its commitments and mission to reduce its contributions to climate change, and look forward to Vassar following through.

Thank you to all the students that have helped to make divestment possible, we are grateful for and proud of the commitment you have shown to bettering our community.

We also want to acknowledge the work being done to divest Vassar from private prisons, and will support continued efforts across campus to reduce Vassar’s harm and continuation of inequity.

BREAKING: After a decade of constant pressure by students, faculty, and alums, HARVARD IS FINALLY DIVESTING FROM FOSSIL FUELS. It’s a massive victory for our community, the climate movement, and the world — and a strike against the power of the fossil fuel industry.

It took conversations and protests, meetings with administration and faculty/alumni votes, mass sit-ins and arrests, historic legal strategies and storming football fields. But today, we can see proof that activism works, plain and simple.

It shouldn’t have taken a decade for to catch up with the climate reality. This is emblematic of a fundamental lack of transparency, failure of governance, and total lack of accountability to the Harvard community — failings that Harvard must resolve if it wants to address the challenges of the future.

To be sure, this commitment is incomplete until it’s actually done. Harvard can’t afford to delay — the endowment must be decarbonized in full & remaining investments must be eliminated as rapidly as possible. We’ll keep fighting to ensure that Harvard actually follows through on its promises.

And there’s much more to come & to be done — we look forward to a new year of holding it to account when it comes to transparency, just reinvestment, ending the immense financial ties between Harvard’s research initiatives and the fossil fuel industry, & more

To summarize: This announcement is a massive victory for activists and for the planet. And our movement will be here to make sure that for Harvard, it’s only a beginning when it comes to building a more just and stable future.

sign up to make a public comment to show your opposition to Danskammer!

The countdown continues, as the public hearing on Danskammer draws closer. This will be one of the few chances for people to voice their opposition to a new fracked gas plant coming to the Hudson Valley. A large turnout will make a big impression, and we encourage folks to register today for the hearing! The deadline to register is March 29th by 5pm. No need to be an expert-- this is FOR THE PEOPLE! For more info visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1amQPPRrVNTjzAsmgXUuF2jXwhHaI5tbo7saqIwTRMHY/edit?usp=sharing

A Just Transition means that no one should profit from projects that violate Indigenous Sovereignty. No one should profit from activities that lock us into decades of carbon emissions.

Liberty Mutual does both. We signed onto a letter calling on Liberty Mutual’s CEO David Long to stop insuring pipelines because his company continues to insure controversial pipelines, despite other insurers committing to stop doing business with them.

The letter amplifies the calls of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association for Long to meet with Indigenous leaders about LM’s involvement in fossil fuel projects. The GPTCA requested a meeting in October, yet received no reply. Read the letter here: tinyurl.com/davidlongletter

https://medium.com//why-is-stopline3-so-important-65be874445d9

Why is #StopLine3 so important? Line 3 is on the same scale as Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines but hasn’t gotten the same amount of media attention or public care…

Zine about get involved here: https://linktr.ee/stopline3