ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS BOARD (E.A.B.)

by Katie Maynard & Soumil Mehta

The Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) is a student organization to protect, preserve, and enhance the environment, principally at UCSB and its surrounding communities. EAB connects the community and campus through raising ecological awareness, enhancing open space, teaching K-12 environmental education, hosting the annual Earth Day Festival, and building partnerships and programs for addressing sustainability. In the past year EAB has been active on several fronts.

Last fall, EAB’s Sustainable Foods campaign became an official campaign of the California Student Sustainability Coalition at the convergence we hosted at UCSB. This means that schools all over the state are making sustainable foods a priority. We also continued our commitment to community education. Every Friday, the EAB education chair and other EABers met at Isla Vista Elementary School to teach a class of 3rd grade students about various environmental topics. The teaching includes hands-on learning in the school’s organic gardens, and field trips to the Devereux tide pools and Ellwood butterfly preserve.

Throughout the year EAB established academic courses through the Education for Sustainable Living Project (ESLP). ESLP is a unique collaboration among students, community members, ESLP alumni, staff, and faculty to realize sustainable community. ESLP has four main components: 7-12 student-led, student-initiated Group Studies
Projects per quarter, a nine-week lecture series featuring internationally recognized speakers, a concurrent film series, and a weekend retreat. In only a year we have expanded from one department to 10, ranging from Environmental Studies to Womyn’s Studies, and Ecology Evolution and Marine Biology. We believe sustainability includes everything that goes into meeting the constantly evolving needs of a community. (See http://orgs.sa.ucsb.edu/esl/ to learn more about ESLP’s work.)

In the winter, EAB hosted a movie on ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge), titled “Oil on Ice.” We also attended the Winter CSSC Convergence in Santa Cruz. We also held a tree planting at Trigo-Pasado Park. Winter held a lot of planning for the big event of the spring...
Earth Day! The festival drew a huge crowd and included informational exhibits, local bands, cultural performances, vendors, and of course, the human wave. The theme was “Baile con Pachamama” or “Dance with Mother Earth.” The spring also saw the attempt at a lock-in fee increase to fund EAB’s growing activity and ESLP personnel positions, which fell short by 4%. The composting program, which began in the fall, continued to grow, led by EAB co-chair Aaron Gilliam. We completed a contract with Isla Vista Recreation and Park District for use of People’s Park to place worm bins in. We also created a brand new Associated Students group, AS Department of Public Worms, which will have paid positions to compost food from local businesses in People’s Park.

EAB truly had a super year, as evidenced by our selection as the AS Board of the Year. Throughout the year we worked with the Long Range Development Plan to plan a sustainable UCSB campus for the next twenty years. Our leadership is also very dynamic. We have many new chairs, and Abby Horn and Eric Cummings will replace last year’s co-chairs, Alisha Dahlstrom and Aaron Gilliam.

EAB also goes on scenic hikes, had delicious potlucks, and memorable camping trips. The result is lasting friendships with others who share a love for nature, life, and peace.

Environmental Affairs Board has been actively involved in the school’s institutional orientation process and has been thankful for their openness to allowing us to work with them. We are also very thankful to be included in this submission for this sort of space has not been set up before to our knowledge and will help to build acknowledgement of the activism on our campus and its rich history.