MOORHEAD — On Friday, April 25, 2025 from noon to 2 p.m., a small demonstration was held by the Student Environmental Alliance (SEA), near the Concordia campus fire pit to voice their support for sustainability efforts on campus. [Editors Note: this story is no longer current and was not published until September 2025]
The crowd drew on sidewalks with chalk, drawing colorful artwork and writing calls to action such as “There is no planet B,” “Make noise, make change,” and “Make conco sustainable again.”
The demonstration is in response to the sustainability office on campus being “restructured,” and the sustainability coordinator Sarah Orr, being removed from her position.
“It’s just to show them that this is something that students, and we have lots of faculty here too, that really care about sustainability, and we’re gonna hold them accountable going forward,” says SEA president Delaney Claggett.
The various responsibilities of the sustainability office are in the process of being passed down to other groups on campus, including the library, who will be in charge of Cobbikes, and facilities management, who will oversee the Cornucopia garden.
The SEA leadership does not think that the restructuring of the sustainability office will be as effective in promoting sustainable practices on campus without the central authority of the sustainability office
They stress that some responsibilities of the office are simply being removed, and not moved elsewhere.
“It’s definitely not going to be the same when it’s restructured,” says SEA vice president Sydney Negri.
Negri says some positions in the sustainability office like eco reps will likely not change much (they will now be under the umbrella of residence life). However, she says the school is lacking a plan for positions like the climate, transportation, garden and food internships.
The food intern has in the past arranged donations to the food pantry on campus.
“The food intern helped us to set up, like, donations for the food pantry and stuff like that. And that’s where, like, taste, not waste, comes from,” says Negri.
Because not all of the positions that have been filled in the past have a clear future, there are a lot of unknowns as SEA continues to grapple with the ongoing restructuring efforts.
“It’s also unclear what the end goal is for the Fall Harvest then, because in the past, that’s when we would bring [the harvest] here for the students, or, like, bring it to like, different places in the communities, like food pantries,” says Claggett.
“What are we gonna do about these things? And pretty much a lot of it is uncertain at this point,” says Negri.
On April 3 SEA announced on their Instagram page that they had received 373 signatures on a form asking students to sign if they supported the campus having a sustainability office on campus.
The demonstration had a relaxed atmosphere. Students who were there talked, drew on sidewalks, and studied nearby the firepit.
“I’m here because I really care about the planet and our collective continued existence on it. And I’m pretty upset about the campus’s actions, or lack of actions towards sustainability,” says Malachi Elmhorst, a 2nd year student who was attending the demonstration.
Also in attendance was Lily Medved-Charpentier, a third year student.
“The college is dissolving the sustainability office because they think it doesn’t matter. We’re here to prove that it does,” she says.
