Because most work in a club is done away from the meetings, students can still become involved if they cannot attend the meetings. We would gladly include students who have time to help out only occasionally. Anybody who wants to be in touch can reach us at sustainability.marylhurst@gmail.com.

Simon, to your point, I think my concern with the term sustainability is that it paints a picture of doing no better than keeping our heads above water — mere survival. Perhaps it implies that only doing less bad is plenty good when we really should be doing everything we can. I would prefer a term like thrivability, but that would elicit only more blank stares. So sustainability it was!

We are starting small since our numbers are thin. Continuing our push to end the sale of bottled water on campus will be our main project this quarter (you can find AnnaLee’s online petition on change.org if you Google something like “Marylhurst bottled water ban”). Recruiting will certainly continue to be another big thing. We do have a list of projects we want to get to over time, but since this a student organization, we want to hear other students’ ideas!

Social justice and economic sustainability are indeed enormously connected, and that will surely come into play more as we grow enough to get more involved off-campus. Raising awareness on campus of “real world” issues will certainly be involved.

Thanks again-

Alex Mihm

I thought it was interesting that earlier this week, the Portland Business Journal said that the term “sustainability” was passe because people didn’t really understand what it meant. One of the most interesting things learned this past week was from activist John Francis (aka Planetwalker), who said that we need to redefine “the environment.” He argues that as human beings, we are also part of the environment…so to taking care of one another is a critical part of taking care of the planet.

Unfortunately, work and class on Thursday prevented me from being able to attend the SOS meeting but I look forward to updates! I’m hoping that the club will address social justice and economic sustainability as well, as it ties directly in with the environmental aspects.

Regards,
Simon

Thanks you so much for writing this! Martin Heidegger said that it is possible to sum up the spirit and crisis of a time with a single question. For him, in the early 20th century, it was the question of being — specifically, how the question of being is forgotten in any evaluation of it. Luce Irigaray, around 1980, said the question of the time was sexual difference: what is sexual difference? Today, I wonder if the question defining our time is precisely this: the precipitous eradication of indigenous and local languages. Why do I say this beyond, perhaps, the obvious? Because language/communication is not simply about the transmission of information and facts; arguably, what makes communication a vital cultural function, one that then influences political organization/resistance and ethical commitments, is precisely the difficulty of transmission, the inherent strain within the communicative act that forces us to engage the other, to listen!

In other words, the market imperative to transmit information as quickly and accessibly as possible has the effect of liquidating culture — of reducing differences into advertisements for multiculturalism.

Anyway, I have taken your post and ran with it, but I think you touch a very important nerve.

Thanks and long live the Irish —- language!

David