Episode Four

Episode Four

Alix Barry: ENV Certificate Episode 

Alix Barry, a member of Princeton Women’s Crew, is the epitome of awesome. I had such a fantastic time talking with her on the Earning Our Stripes podcast. This episode is slightly different from the others in the series in that we focus on environmentalism and sustainability in college sports, and what student athletes can do to advocate for better environmental practices. The intention behind this episode was to explore the NCAA’s relationship with sustainability and the possible ways that college sport can be ‘greener.’

 

What We Talked About and Why it Matters

Alix Barry’s Episode is formatted differently than my previous podcasts. While it sits comfortably in the ‘cannon’ of Earning Our Stripes I approached this episode and the interview that it is rooted in on the environmental sustainability of the NCAA and Princeton’s Athletic department. I specifically wanted to hear from a fellow Princeton Tiger about how they perceived environmental sustainability to play a role in their athletic life at Princeton, and in Princeton’s athletic life on a whole. I decided to interview my good friend Alix Barry, who I first my freshman year met in an EEB class. Both Alix and I are concerned about sustainability, and how it is most productive for humans to be good stewards of the natural resources that we utilise daily.

As Student Athletes our lives here revolve heavily around the completion and performance of athletic events and practice. Both of these conditions of Student-Athlete life could have an impact on the environment, either directly or indirectly. The sources of these impacts range between being caused at an individual, institutional or organizational level. Therefore, I decided this episode should be centred on the ways in which the performance/enaction of sustainability is enacted within the NCAA.  Alix and I discussed the extent to which we perceive environmental sustainability to actively play a role in athletic department practices, and if the institutions (specifically the NCAA) prioritise  optics over actual tangible change.

In researching the environmental policies of the NCAA I found that there are no apparent policies dispensed by the NCAA for a focus on sustainable athletics of their member institutions. In fact, if you look up NCAA environmental policies on the internet your search will first return a webpage entitled: “A greener gameday” (NCAA.org 2013). This page is helpful in highlighting that an NCAA approach to athletic sustainability will be in celebrating the schools that were initiating environmental policies, but not ruling that they should be a necessity for all NCAA schools. Interestingly, it is athletic conferences that are leading the way in terms of prioritising sustainable practices in their athletics;

 

“In June, representatives from athletics departments from around the nation met with sustainability professionals and recycling/facility managers at the 2013 Collegiate Sports Sustainability Summit in Atlanta to discuss common goals and best practices. This marked the third time the event was held, with next year’s summit scheduled to take place in Boulder, Colo. It all began as a regional event with the collaboration of the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeastern Conference and the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, with more than 200 athletics departments developing sustainability programs, it is a national event” (NCAA.org 2013).

 

As much as it is slightly disheartening that the NCAA itself does not have a unilateral approach to sustainability, the fact that there are conference wide sustainability summits is a sign that sustainability in an athletics context is a dimension of college life that is being taken at least somewhat seriously. For example, high level collegiate conferences are collaborating and making statements about their intended commitment to creating sustainable practices. “The Pac-12 Sustainability Conference is focused on an elevated approach to driving sustainability action within collegiate athletics departments, designing new collective initiatives, and sharing best practices to transform college sports into a platform for social impact and environmental progress” (pac-12sustainabilityconference.com 2022). What most intrigues me from this statement in particular is the idea of using athletic events as a ‘platform for social impact’ (pac-12sustainabilityconference.com 2022). The Pac-12 is a highly competitive conference, and therefore hosts games and athletic events featuring teams with huge fanbases. With huge crowds and attendance of athletic events come the opportunity to encourage active participation amongst people who are avid supporters of the teams on display and the ways in which these teams approach performance. In a Princeton context, my research into environmental initiatives at the collegiate athletics level yielded the information that the Ivy League does have a sustainability initiative apparently called the “Ivy Green Initiative” (Henly 2013, 5).

While it is undoubtedly reassuring to know that there are conversations about sustainability occurring within athletic conferences, specifically the Ivy League, my concern about this initiatives as a current Princeton Student Athlete is that I have never perceived their effect or presence during my time here. As you will here when you listen to this episode of Earning our Stripes both Alix and I had never heard of the Ivy Green Initiative. You could argue that the two of us are a small sample size, and perhaps we simply missed information pertaining to Ivy League sustainability. However, Alix is not the only Student Athlete who I have discussed this initiative with, and we are not the only people who were unaware of its existence. Here we circle back to the idea of optics vs actual change in putting sustainability into practice. If Student Athletes who are invested in the actioning of sustainability are themselves not feeling the presence of sustainability initiatives within athletic departments could this be evidence of a lack of actual institutional action at Princeton? Could it be instead that Student-Athletes are not being recruited as advocates and ideas people in the pursuit of sustainability in athletics? Should we be?

In considering these questions I delved deeper into Henly’s “Collegiate Game Changers, How Campus Sport is Going Green (2013). Specifically, into the case study of Yale University and its approach to tackling sustainability in its athletic endeavours. The report details and extensive amount of work being undertaken by Yale’s athletic department, and specifically states that “the Bulldogs’ student-led greening approach consists of many small initiatives that together add up to a comprehensive and successful environmental program” (Henly 2013, 68). Across the report it is Yale’s incorporation, and in fact centring of students, in coming up with and facilitating their athletic sustainability action plan that is most interesting to me in comparison with the way Princeton operates;

 

“The majority of Bulldog Sustainability initiatives begin as student project proposals, which are reviewed and approved by athletics department staff. The students decide what to research according to what they believe will have the most influence on campus culture, will be interesting to students and staff, will reduce the athletics department’s environmental impact, and will be possible to fund” (Henly 2013, 70).

 

Personally, I am an EcoRep on our campus. We work with the Office of Sustainability to help facilitate campus sustainability initiatives. The Princeton EcoReps were previously split into teams, one of which was ‘greening athletics’ whose job as student athletes who were also EcoReps was to work specifically with the athletic department. However, in the time since I was first hired as an EcoRep this aspect of EcoReps duty has been shifted, and there is no longer a group of people focused on athletics specifically. Reading about the partnership between Yale students and their athletic department highlights the fact that student-athletes, and students with no athletic commitments, are of value in building an athletic culture that supports environmentalism. As a case study Yale is particularly interesting due to its shared stake in the Ivy League. Their inclusion of students in chasing athletic sustainability is in some ways a partial answer to one of my questions; yes students are important in implementing sustainability initiatives.

I created this thesis podcast in order to have frank and open conversations about the lived experiences of Student Athletes, and can think of few conversations that are more important than discussions surrounding the implementation and increased awareness of  practices meant to encourage sustainability at both the individual and institutional level. I hope that in listening to this episode of Earning Our Stripes Alix and I have discussed what environmentalism and sustainability means to us as Student-Athletes. I went into the interview knowing that we could be about to cover a plethora of topics, and as such prepared an interview guide that would keep us on track.

 

Below is a list of questions that I used in order to inform my interview with Alix.

Questions: 

 

To introduce the Alix’s episode of the podcast I planned to use the same intro questions that I have already outlined in this written paper as central to the Earning Our Stripes format.

 

Basics:

 

How would you describe environmental sustainability?

 

Does this have a place in college sport?

 

What are Princeton’s commitments to environmental sustainability?

 

Do you perceive these to play any role in the way the athletic department operates?

 

Relationships,

 

If any, what is the environmental impact of your sport?

What role do you perceive athletes to have in advocating for sustainability, is there anything we can do to highlight the need for an approach from within the athletic department, and our institution?

 

Compliance, 

 

Whose responsibility/rules should environmental sustainability in the athletic arena be beholden to?

Do you think the NCAA has any specific policies in place in relation to environmental sustainability?

 

Earning Our Stripes Recurring Questions:

(May be included depending on how the conversation goes)

 

  • Day in the life of Princeton Women’s crew.
  • How do you perceive the life of a student athlete; do consider the role of student athlete to be completing two jobs?
  • Are our athlete support systems good enough to keep student athletes in shape athletically, academically, and most important mentally?
  • How does balancing athletic commitments work alongside academic ones? Do you find balance?
  • How does your sport facilitate an audience?

 

Conclude based on how the conversation has developed.

(For a partial transcript and episode breakdown see Appendix.)

 

Reflection

 

Alix and I sat down to talk about the implications of sustainability initiatives within the NCAA and the Ivy league with no real perception of what we would cover and what subject areas we would find particularly interesting. Our discussions ranged from how she approaches her athletic and academic endeavours at Princeton, to the ways in which we as Student Athletes perceive environmental sustainability to play a part in our athletic life. There are a number of particularly important themes covered during the interview and I am going to delves into them now. Perhaps most controversially when looking at sustainability through the lens of Student Athletes is the idea that it really is payment and paid work that could incentivises people, specifically Student Athletes to learn and care about issues of social justice and environmentalism. If we as a University are committed to educating people through athletics then it would be useful to prioritise the actual partaking of students at the universities in learning and thinking about how to prioritise sustainability as an athletic community.  As Alix put it; “it all comes back to money for me.” Using the Yale athletic department’s approach to incorporating students into sustainability action plans for comparison, it would not be unintelligent to suggest that we need more money invested in Princeton specific sustainability programs and initiatives.

Putting money aside, I think it is really important for Student Athletes to ask questions of the administration. Perhaps, the most important question to ask is what is the Ivy Green initiative in practice? What does this mean for athletes and administrators who are concerned about our collective impact on the environment? Does this initiative actually play a role in how the athletic department approaches sustainability in its operations. After the conclusion of recording I reached out to current Ford Family Director of Athletics John Mack in an attempt to answer the above questions. Helpfully, he was quick to reply with the following response:

 

“The Ivy League established the Ivy Green Initiative roughly 10 years ago to bring attention to sustainability initiatives and commit to conducting more environmentally friendly and sustainable championship events. Here at Princeton, we have worked with the Office of Sustainability to meet University standards. Specifically, we use recyclable materials at our events and recycling receptacles are located at each venue. We have eliminated paper media guides and game day programs in exchange for electronic versions of both. We are also increasing our mobile ticketing options to reduce our paper usage. Lastly, we have switched to higher efficiency lighting systems and switched many of our light switch systems to motion activated for energy conservation.” (John Mack Ford Family Director of Athletics 2022)

 

While this email response is evidence that the Princeton athletic department is concerned with upholding University sustainability standards, I am still unsure of the extent to which the ‘Ivy Green Initiative’ has an impact on our collective approach to investing in practices that invest in sustainability for years to come. First steps are of course needed, but second, third and fourth steps are of the utmost importance.

Finally, I want to highlight the definition of sustainability that Alix offered the Earning Our Stripes podcast. She defined sustainability as holding large organizations to account for ensuring that adequate practices prioritising sustainability are put into place, and are actually actionable by the individuals who beholden to them. A perfect example of this being the NCAA, who as Alix put it “there must be a change within powerful institutions like the NCAA, especially because they control so many young people’s lives.” Looking into this definition I think it is important to situate Student-Athletes as dependents in a system that controls much of our bodily and mental autonomy, whilst also offering us opportunities that non-student athletes are unable to access. One of the questions I sought to answer in undertaking this environmental based episode of Earning our Stripes was to ask whether Student-Athletes are currently absent in the process of advocating for, and suggesting ideas, within the pursuit of sustainability in athletics. I wondered if there was space for Student Athletes in achieving a ‘greener’ athletic department. Reflecting on our discussion I think the ‘dependent’ status of Student Athletes, twinned with genuine interest and passion for the environment, means that there is of course space for Student-Athletes to stake a claim in sustainability initiatives.

Sources

Henly, Alice. 2013. “NRDC: Collegiate Game Changers, How Campus Sport Is Going Green” Accessed March 15th 2022 https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/collegiate-game-changers-report.pdf

Mack, John. 2022. “Thesis Inquiry.” Email.

NCAA.org “A greener gameday” Accessed Tuesday 15th March 2022 https://www.ncaa.org/news/2013/11/22/a-greener-gameday.aspx

Pac-12sustainabilityconference.com. 2022. “Pac-12 Sustainability Conference is June 15-16, 2022”  http://pac-12sustainabilityconference.com/#:~:text=Pac%2D12%20Sustainability%20Conference%20is%20June%2015%2D16%2C%202022&text=Consistent%20with%20its%20reputation%20as,athletics%20and%20across%20college%20campuses. Accessed Tuesday 15th of March, 2022.