The 2025 Teach-In on Sustainability came to a close with an event that put the main themes of comedy and student action into hilarious practice. 

The Laughmageddon Comedy Show, which brought together various campus comedians and sketch troupes for a group showcase that was produced by sophomore comedic arts major Jaden Lopez. On Friday evening, a crowd of about 40 people gathered in the Judee to see how different student comics and comedy organizations interpreted the phrase, “It’s the end of our world as we know it.” The phrase was a reference to ongoing anxieties related to climate change, tasking comedians to find their own unique twist on a dark subject.  

“It’s the end of the world, we’re just gonna laugh anyway. We don’t have to shy away from these issues or problems,” Lopez told The Beacon. “We can talk about it, and it can be funny, and it doesn’t need to always be so serious.”

Lopez opened the event with his own stand-up act, referencing climate change and rising temperatures. He shared ways he tries to practice sustainability, such as composting in the Dining Center, telling his friends they “can’t recycle their sex toys,” and taking public transit.

Graham Eiden, a junior comedic arts major, followed Lopez’s act. Eiden’s stand-up act reflected his experience of becoming a vegetarian two months ago, and he poked fun at the large number of people who still eat meat.

“Apparently, no matter how bad factory farming gets, I think we all care a little bit more about how yummy the steak is,” Eiden said during his act. “The meat industry is a testament to the limits of human empathy, so much so that it is a testament to animals being delicious.”

In between stand-up acts, Chocolate Cake City, a student sketch organization, took to the stage to perform two sketches with themes of composting and oil pipelines. 

Mara Escobar is a sophomore comedic arts major from El Paso, Texas. In her act, Escobar talked about her experience living in a city on the United States-Mexico border while being Mexican herself. She reminisced on her childhood years, where she participated in swim meets, her motivation inspired by Olympian Michael Phelps.

“[During] his historic Olympic run, nothing was with the U.S. We all came together, and we cheered for Michael Phelps,” Escobar joked. “Think about that time, though. Obama was president, same sex marriage was legalized, and climate change didn’t even exist yet.”

Elizabeth Stone, a senior comedic arts major, said while she doesn’t like going outside, she still sees the harm towards sustainable lifestyles in technology due to artificial intelligence.

“This is a real thing, not a joke. It is incredibly harmful for your cognitive abilities, it harms the way you think about things, and also is incredibly harmful for the environment,” Stone said during her act. “It just feels like we took enemies to lovers to a whole new level.”

Lopez said he felt honored that Laughmageddon was the event to close out the Teach-In. 

“I hope next year, we have more people coming and we have bigger events like this,” Lopez said.

An intimate crash course on marketing communication was held on Thursday afternoon for staff and students in Little Building, room 228.  

The Hardcore Marketing Workshop: Marketing for the Non-Marketer covered United Nations Sustainable Development Goal Number Four: Quality Education. 

Michael Tucker, Senior Executive-in-Residence and Associate Chair in Marketing Communication at Emerson, created the concept of Hardcore Marketing and presented the workshop. The hardcore aspect, he said, came from squeezing an hour and a half of one of his typical marketing courses into just under an hour. 

“[It’s] an alternative approach to the traditional marketing process that yields pro-level strategic insights and creative direction in a highly compressed timeframe,” Tucker said, adding that the concept was born from a time when he would teach past colleagues about marketing in a crash course manner. 

Attendees of the workshop were taught Hardcore Marketing principles like projecting to a target market and how to use them in a judgment-free zone. 

“Marketers need to speak truth,” said Tucker. 

He said that he reiterates this statement time and time again in all of his courses. It’s one of the most important principles of marketing because people can sniff out lies, and they generally don’t enjoy being lied to, he continued. 

Tucker said that in the current media age, consumers tend to speak out more when they dislike something rather than when they like something. 

“The most important component in the marketing communication equation is the consumer,” he said. 

Tucker explained that there is a critical value exchange between producers and consumers. He emphasized that the primary objective for all marketing communications is engagement. 

Tucker created an acronym, D.O.T.S., on how to Hardcore Market. D stands for dollars because nothing happens without money, O stands for objective, which is what you need to accomplish, T stands for target, the most important component according to Tucker, and S stands for strategy, the steps to accomplish your objective. 

Nejem Raheem, Ph.D., event organizer and chair of the department of marketing communications at Emerson, popped in a quarter of the way into the workshop. He explained that the marketing workshop was included in the Teach-In on Sustainability workshops because it is an important skill for everyone to learn. Knowing how to market to varying audiences is useful in conveying important topics, like sustainability.

Tucker introduced another acronym for the four aspects of target segmentation, the process of breaking a target market into smaller groups: G.A.I.L. (gender, age, income, location). G.A.I.L. falls under the first category of segmentation, demographics. The second category is psychographics, which involves things consumers choose to be interested in. The third category is consumption, which is used to measure consumers’ habits related to a company or R.F.M. (recency, frequency, monetary). The fourth is usage, which is how the target audience employs a certain product. 

Marketers play on consumers’ needs and wants; their physical deprivations and psychological deprivations, Tucker said. Marketers may reel in consumers using a strategy called U.S.P. (unique selling proposition) or a brand promise. For this strategy to be successful, brands make a single promise, a unique benefit, and offer a compelling argument. 

To break up the lecture, Tucker did a marketing brainstorming activity with all attendees. Everyone wrote down the first three things that came to their mind when posed the topic: water. 

Water was chosen because the world runs on water, Tucker said. Everyone passed their papers to others in a five-person circle, and everyone wrote feedback, questions, or comments on their ideas. This rotation happened five times every minute or so until everyone received their own papers back. 

Tucker explained that this is an effective activity to do in the marketing world because there’s not enough time to overthink, and no one person dominates the conversation. Everyone can contribute their ideas effectively and receive feedback from a variety of people. Brainstorming in marketing should be a judgment-free zone until the very end when it comes time to evaluate, he added.

“Aim for abundance. From great quantities of ideas come great quality ideas,” said Tucker. “One and done is not a thing, not in this world of hardcore marketing.” 

Tucker wrapped up with additional advice for marketing students: assume nothing, stay humble, listen twice as much as you speak, don’t over-roast, and understand the difference between a challenge and a struggle. He left attendees with his list of creative and life rules that echoed his previous set of advice, with the inclusion of practicing empathy. 

“Kindness is what is going to get this world through. That’s my personal belief,” said Tucker.

Most of the workshops on Friday afternoon were led by Emerson alumni and professionals, but Yao Xiao, a senior journalism and marketing communications double major, rounded out the day by demonstrating how the skills and topics students are currently learning in their classes can be applied to shared learning events, like the Teach-In.

Xiao led a presentation and discussion about the Earth Charter, a moral guide that echoes principles and values related to sustainability. The presentation for the Teach-In was adapted from a final project she did in a marketing class, named Sustainability Communication to Make Meaningful Change, taught by event coordinator Nejem Raheem. Xiao completed the project with her classmate Gyuri Won ‘25, who virtually joined the workshop from Korea.

Following a few short videos about sustainability, Xiao explained the Earth Charter, and how its pillars overlap with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Earth Charter is a document created over 20 years ago by The Earth Charter Commission. It focuses on principles and values that promote the development of sustainability within an individual’s home, career, and daily life. According to the website, the goal of the Earth Charter is to act as a guide and soft law to turn conscience into action.

“We urgently need a shared vision of values to provide an ethical foundation for emerging world communities,” said Xiao.

The 16 principles are organized into four pillars.

The first is “Respect and Care for the Community of Life.” The pillar encourages people to respect all living things, care for the community, build sustainable, democratic societies, and secure Earth’s gifts for current and future generations. The last part reflects the UN’s definition of sustainability: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” 

The second pillar, “Ecological Integrity,” urges people to protect the environment through adopting nonharmful practices and habits and furthering education on sustainability. 

As Xiao explained each principle, she provided the audience with actions they can implement in their daily lives to uphold the values of the charter. For the second pillar, Xiao suggested bringing a reusable cup to campus and to thrift clothes instead of buying from fast fashion companies.

Pillar three focused on “Social and Economic Justice.” This emphasizes the importance of maintaining not just the environment, but humanity itself through protecting against discrimination and affirming equality and equity.

The final pillar, titled “Democracy, Peace, and Nonviolence,”  encouraged the maintenance and strengthening of the mentioned values, as well as the integration of sustainability into education. Xiao said this pillar, like the others, emphasized individual actions people can take to contribute to the larger collective.

“A peaceful world starts from a peaceful you,” she said.

After concluding the summary of the Earth Charter, Xiao and Won facilitated a review game of Kahoot, where every person in the audience of about a dozen ended up getting a perfect score. Xiao said these results reflected the effectiveness of the charter and a communication tool, as well as potentially previous sustainability knowledge among the audience. 

“[Emerson is] a really great place that already has so many students caring about the situation that we are facing and what kind of things that we can improve, so I think that’s a great start,” Xiao told The Beacon. 

The presentation ended with discussions in small groups on how to make scenarios more sustainable and how more sustainable actions can be implemented into the daily student life.

Raheem, one of the organizers of the Teach-In, said he was proud that his previous and current students are taking initiative and becoming involved with the larger sustainability conversation on campus. Xiao is one of the individuals involved with creating a new major, Sustainability Communication. Going forward, Raheem said he hopes students will be more encouraged to participate in the challenging work that goes into the Teach-In.

“It’s not a thing people are used to, so we got to find a way to build it into some of the classes that we teach to make it clear that you can do this,” Raheem said.

Friday’s educational programming wrapped up with a panel discussion about how sustainability efforts and the energy infrastructure of the country have shifted since President Donald Trump’s administration took power last year.

The discussion titled “Industry Insights: Now What? When Good Work becomes Bad Words,” featured Evan Chapman, a 2011 Emerson graduate, now a climate, clean energy, and environmental policy and advocacy expert working in Washington, D.C for Clean Tomorrow. Scott Clavenna, a creative writing MFA 1998 graduate and co-founder and CEO of Latitude Media, a Somerville-based climate, tech, and energy publication, also spoke during the discussion. The talk was moderated by Zayan Agha, a film and media art MFA student.

Clavenna opened up the panel by discussing climate pledges, a practice instituted over the last decade by many businesses and other institutions, including Emerson, of committing to reaching carbon neutrality on an expedited timeline. 

He said that these pledges became another example of something in the corporate world that took hold very easily because it’s an easy thing to say, but didn’t last.

During his time working in one such corporation, Clavenna said a greater focus was put on making easy short-term investments that look good, like buying renewable energy credits, not on overhauling full systems towards clean energy. 

While this was disillusioning, he said, it has only gotten worse in the recent political climate.

“Once Trump’s elected, now all those net zero pledges are gone,” he said, adding that the few companies that have stuck with renewable energy sources did so because they could see the economic benefits of that system, which is cheaper than non-renewable sources. 

Clavenna and Chapman both said that emphasizing the self-interest and investment benefits present in going clean will make more progress across political aisles possible, rather than trying to go back to any kind of ethically or environmentally framed pledge.

Chapman, who spent time on Capitol Hill before his current position, said that he is willing to work with anyone, no matter what disagreements he may have politically, in order to further the clean energy movement. He said making progress in the last few years has meant trying to meet people where they are and make the case for why clean energy makes sense for them, not convince them of some greater good.

“If someone is a horrible person who wants to do the right thing on clean energy, I’ll talk to them every day,” Chapman said. “Whether that feels good or bad for us, what matters in the end is accomplishing those goals.”

In a United States with Trump at the helm, both speakers said most of the proper innovation in the clean energy space is coming from other countries. Today, China is the undisputed leader in clean energy infrastructure. 

“So as long as China keeps doing what they’re doing [in energy], even if they’re an adversary to us, even if whatever, as the planet is concerned, that’s a big positive,” Chapman said. 

The conversation then shifted to artificial intelligence data center construction, and Chapman shared a similar willingness to work with this growing industry, despite its reputation for being environmentally destructive. He said that AI may come to help clean up energy because of the sheer volume of energy it will need as a resource, which can drive clean production.

Chapman said the end goal of clean energy ultimately is to build as much of it as possible, which AI, with its high usage rates, will eventually rely on because of the cost-effectiveness of renewable sources. 

“I don’t particularly care why they want it. The important thing is that there’s more clean energy available that displaces what would otherwise be possible.”

Chapman said this echoes the growing “abundance” movement within the Democratic party, which argues for breaking from legislative tradition by promoting streamlined regulation and pro-growth policies as a socio-economic solution to America’s problems.

“Abundant energy is good … We need to be confident that clean energy is going to be a net win for folks,” Chapman said. 

For both Clavenna and Chapman, things will need to change following Trump’s climate rollbacks if America wants to be the industry leader in clean energy that it could be. Clavenna said this might be difficult given how hard it is to quantify for the human eye the progress that clean energy makes on the world.

“People don’t quite get … that we’re in a cleaner energy situation here in Massachusetts than in Kentucky,” he said. He explained that he thinks it was a missed opportunity for previous administrations to not push for large, visible, clean energy public works like high-speed rail that demonstrate the usefulness of the technology.

“This really is the next industrial revolution, and if we really want to lead on it [as a country], we have to try,” Chapman said.

Both Conor Biddle and Jordan Cipolla, who graduated from Emerson in 2018, said they can relate to the toxic productivity and hustle culture present at creative schools like Emerson and in the wider freelance space adjacent to filmmaking and media. 

That’s why, after working production jobs in Hollywood, they developed Onward, a productivity management platform for freelancers that embeds wellness prioritization into its planner program. 

“We think that work and wellbeing are inseparable,” Biddle said. “To forget your wellbeing is leaving a huge part of all of us behind when we go into the workplace.”

In their Friday workshop, “Building a Healthy Working Life for Freelancers & Creatives,” Biddle and Cipolla distributed worksheets with a pyramid tower shape for the roughly dozen attendees to write down their career goals and aspirations by the year 2035, as well as the tangible hurdles and challenges they may encounter in achieving them. Beneath all of this, they then asked people to brainstorm what healthy wellness habits and routines they can use every day to create a balance between these goals and self-prioritization. 

“We like to help people dream in because we’re dreamers ourselves, but that headline can really be any goal that you have,” Biddle told The Beacon.

The duo shared that a goal they have for the next ten years is to win a New York Times Good Tech Award for Onward, telling attendees to set lofty goals and really allow themselves the space to dream during the session.

Those attending the workshop then shared their own goals of awards and achievements they hope to attain one day in media, philanthropy, and education.

Using their own stories of accomplishments and failures in Los Angeles, Biddle and Cipolla then went on to detail the kinds of struggles that may come along with your dreams, while emphasizing that the path to success is never clear or a straight line. 

Both creatives also detailed periods of burnout in their careers that they said always came down to making their lives a “juggle-fest” of different projects, where their day-to-day well-being was often neglected.

They cited that 64.3% of freelancers have experienced burnout from a lack of work-life balance, and around 70% feel they don’t have adequate mental health support, encouraging participants in the workshop to think about ways they can prioritize themselves each day in and outside the workplace.

For Cipolla and Biddle, wellness is a part of productivity, and workable wellness behaviors will actually drive greater success. According to a 2016 RAND study, a lack of sleep among the U.S. working population is costing the economy up to $411 billion a year. Furthermore, according to a study by DeskTime, the most productive employees actually take more frequent breaks than lower-performing employees.

“[Wellness] is actually something that we’re trying to help you see is not this thing to just keep separate from work,” Biddle said. “And that when someone says that to you, we would encourage you to push back.”

Cipolla emphasized that the prioritization of these behaviors doesn’t just end when you reach your ultimate career goals, either.

“These habits, starting with the morning walk, starting with meditating, that’s where I center myself and make sure that I’m approaching each day happy and level already,” Cipolla said. 

For students on the college level, Biddle said it’s not too early to begin implementing these same habits into their pre-professional studies.

“I would say that in a way you are, when you’re going to classes and you’re managing your homework … that is in and of itself a really complex balance,” Biddle told The Beacon.

Sophie Rasmussen, a junior communications studies major, said she enjoyed the talk and felt like it gave tangible solutions to burnout and stress. 

“I feel like the two alumni who came to speak here today really broke down the steps that it takes to lead a healthy life and achieve dreams in a way that was a lot more digestible [than typical mantras],” Rasmussen said. “Everyone I know [at Emerson] is working towards some crazy goal, and they need support along the way to keep themselves healthy and sane.”

Suzie Hicks graduated from Emerson in 2018 after doing integrated studies in theater, media, and other subjects during their time at the college. Now, they have a roadmap for how Emerson’s next generation can mix storytelling passions with the need for more in-depth and solutions-oriented climate communication.

Hicks, who lives in Los Angeles, has worked for PBS SoCal for the last seven years and teaches kindergarten climate science in Santa Monica. They are also a sustainability storytelling consultant at Netflix, which means they help to fact-check as well as critique the emotional delivery of information for Netflix’s shows involving climate and wildlife. 

Most recently, their show,  Suzie Hicks the Climate Chick & Sprout, where they co-star alongside a puppet sidekick, Sprout, was picked up by the streaming service, though it’s a program Hicks says they have been doing since they were a student at Emerson.

They began the talk by taking a survey of about a dozen students, alumni, and faculty gathered in the Little Building, about how they first became aware of climate change as a concept. Most people said it originated from some kind of media, such as YouTube videos or documentaries.

“People look to TV and they look to movies and they look at children’s media to show how the world works,” they said, adding that this shows the importance of how these representations are formed.

In an additional survey, everyone raised their hand about having felt climate anxiety before, with attendees expressing stress, frustration, and feelings of doom related to today’s media coverage of the issue. For Hicks, these two threads demonstrate where media and television is going wrong when discussing climate and how it can be reframed for the better education of kids and adults alike.

They said that the best way to combat eco-phobia when it comes to people’s feelings on climate is by presenting solutions-oriented narratives, which is especially important when communicating with children.

While they are predominantly a storyteller for children’s media, Hicks said the approach of “explaining it to me like I’m five,” which is a staple of crafting children’s content, also works surprisingly well in informing adults. Statistically, most adults have around or below a middle school reading level and can benefit from the way children’s stories are told, Hicks said. 

In 2025, climate change and sustainability language is being banned, in some cases in the classroom, Hicks said, making it all the more important to invest in public media solutions and communicate to children, who, whether they know it or not, are being impacted by climate change in their daily lives. 

“I’m not ruining their innocence [by teaching kids about climate change],” Hicks said of a critique their work sometimes receives, which fuels parents’ skepticism about exposing children to climate content. “Kids are actively being displaced by climate disasters … [and] I’d rather keep them safe by freaking them out a little bit than have them not know about it and then frickin’ die,” they said.

Hicks compared this to the work shows like Sesame Street have done in confronting and discussing segregation and racism in the 1960s and 70s, when mainstream culture and parents did not.

Hicks reflected on today’s political landscape, where funding for public broadcasting, like the types they have worked in since graduating from Emerson, is under attack. Additionally, climate denialist measures have taken root in the highest government offices, and they said the answer is to remember and focus on the grass-roots efforts that are still there.

“I’m so deeply disinterested in individual action,” Hicks continued. “The media landscape is saturated with calls for [that], and so me, as one creator, that’s not my brand,” they said, adding that they want to help identify role models beyond politicians and public figures for kids who are doing local sustainability work and can show them how to get involved in organized action.

“Childhood heroes will model the behavior for you that you will be able to take with you in the rest of your lives,” Hicks said.

They explained another blind spot in climate media is a lot of storytelling, especially made for children, which only focuses on what is currently happening and why it matters, without presenting a longer view of causes and solutions.

Hicks said shedding more light on these areas helps shift the climate conversation around from feelings of inevitability and doom to an educated acknowledgement of factors like colonialism, greed, and politics, which have fueled current realities. They added that the environmental movement shouldn’t stand alone from other fights for justice.

“These are things that kids understand because they’re amazing arbiters for justice. They understand, and they will tell you when something is not fair,” Hicks said. “It’s just that adults are scared to talk about it.”

They added that it would be great to see children’s storytelling as a more central focus at communications schools like Emerson.“I think reminding Emerson students that they have the power to be a really important role model to kids will show them that they don’t have to make a video just to impress their other weird art friends,” Hicks told The Beacon. “They can make a video that will change kids’ lives forever.”

A superhero, a Greek myth, and a wind turbine walked into a bar— or, in this case, the Semel Theater. The result was the keynote presentation of the Teach-In that discussed how comedy can aid in conversations about climate change.

“Comedy doesn’t trivialize the crisis. It unlocks imagination and invites collective creative action,” said Provost Alexandra Socarides, who opened the presentation. 

Assistant professor in comedic studies at Emerson, Matt McMahan, and professor of theatre and environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Beth Osnes-Stoedefalke, then took to the stage to lead the presentation, both donned in costume. McMahan was dressed as Superman, known on the fictional planet of Krypton as “Kal-El,” and Osnes-Stoedefalke was dressed as Cassandra, the mythical Trojan princess. 

But Halloween didn’t just come early for the professors—both of their characters connected to issues related to the climate crisis as part of a demonstration of the potential of comedic sustainability storytelling. Cassandra was given the power of prophecy by the Greek god Apollo, but was cursed so that no one would believe her predictions, similar to how scientists get disregarded by the public and the government when warning about climate change, Osnes-Stoedefalke said. Superman was sent down to Earth while his home planet, Krypton, exploded after the planet’s natural environment became too unstable.

The costumes also served to engage the audience, said Osnes-Stoedefalke, as stories invoked by the costumes are more effective than just facts when communicating about climate.

“We need to have fun in this playful state in order to take on a topic that is so dire in nature and … full of this impending doom,” Osnes-Stoedefalke said. “When you’re playing, you’re naturally extending the range of possible options and ways that you might approach challenges and come up with solutions.”

McMahan said creativity needs to be brought into conversations on climate in order to grab attention, explaining that society operates in an “attention economy.” McMahan explained that in this system, the people who control the attention can control policy and discourse.

Comedy then becomes an important tool, McMahan continued, because it can teach an attitude that helps people respond to negative topics, like climate change.

“Your comedy should be about your fear, your anxieties, [and] your helplessness,” he said. “That’s how you tap into it … you teach people to embrace the things they are scared the most of, and you teach people that comedy can actually bond you together by expressing those emotions in a different register together.”

Osnes-Stoedefalke talked about the past classes she has taught on climate comedy, where she brought students and professional comedians together. These classes offered opportunities for students to research climate issues and watch the practice be put into action. She said they were also a reaction to a media environment characterized by a growing distrust of government and mainstream media, and the emergent importance of comedians as a source for news and analysis. 

“More simply put, we are now taking comedians seriously and politicians as a joke,” she said.

McMahan said that climate comedy is already being utilized, mentioning an immersive exhibition in western Massachusetts called “The Plastic Bag Store,” and public service announcement videos featuring well-known actors like Samuel L. Jackson and D’Arcy Carden that encourage the use of wind farms and reducing food waste.

The presentation ended with two students dressed as wind turbines joining McMahan and Osnes-Stoedefalke on stage to lead the crowd in a group sway to a song dedicated to the energy creating devices sung in the tune of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.”

“Climate comedy is a preposterous idea that might just liberate us through that strange involuntary opening of the mouth and the mind known as laughter,” Osnes-Stoedefalke said.  “Fixing the climate crisis is a mighty challenge, with a steep incline in new behaviors, but like any mountain, there’s only one way to get over it—climb it [climate].”

Juxtaposing the comedic themes that will come to the Teach-In in its final day, a short reading of student fiction pieces on Thursday afternoon introduced somber stories and sentiments relating to sustainability.

The reading, moderated by an Assistant Professor in Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Christine Casson, hosted four MFA Fiction student candidates’ original works to a small, intimate audience in a Little Building classroom. The four students took turns reading their passages, followed by a short discussion about the connection between sustainability and their work.

Kalan Cordell was the first student to present an excerpt from his short story titled “The Howling.” Through themes of religion, the queer experience, and trauma, Cordell said he reflected experiences from his own life into his work.

“Sometimes when it comes to issues, you have to bring the sorrow into it so people can take it and be like, ‘Wait a minute,’ and then they can reflect on it,” Cordell said.

Danielle Marston incorporated her past education in marine biology and environmental science into her untitled story about a man trying to save a whale that was entangled in fishing lines. Marston said her interest in short fiction stems from her educational background in the sciences.

“A lot of people in the sciences will tell you that writing is actually really key to science and being able to explain the world and your process to them and anyone,” Marston told The Beacon. “And I think that’s where a lot of my writing comes from and why it’s succinct and short, because it’s direct and to the point.”

The next student, Kathryne McCann, drew inspiration from current events, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that are occurring across the country, in her story, “The Soil Asked For Our Tears,” which follows a girl who was detained by authorities and was relieved of her pain and suffering by eating a special piece of fruit.

“It kind of evolved into being about her relationship with the land … The Latino community [is] often used to work the land, to benefit everyone else,” McCann said. “I was thinking how we’re so often used to extract things from the land that I was like, ‘What if the land gives?’”

Emma Ross wrote and read the final story, titled “The Complex of a Complex Zombie.” The excerpt of the story that Ross read was told through the perspective of a zombie arguing with a human girl, a choice Ross said was made to explore telling stories through a non-human lens.

“Whether it’s zombies in a post-apocalyptic world … when you’re reading this work, what you begin to realize is that it’s a warning, that we don’t want this apocalypse, and that’s what’s going to happen if we keep going on the same track we’re going,” Casson said. 

The four stories shared covered nine of the 17 Sustainable Development goals established by the United Nations: Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-Being, Quality Education, Gender Equality, Reduced Inequality, Climate Action, Life below Water, Life on Land, and Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. 

“From a lot of these sustainability goals, there’s a communal element to them,” Casson said. “That’s an interesting way to think about fiction … how you can get into fiction or a novel and still have your reader feel as though they can make contact with enough of the community to make it a relevant piece of work.”

At noon in the Judee, a panel gathered to discuss the role of sports in social change. It related sports to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and argued that athletics have the potential to unite people regardless of their unique backgrounds.

Members of the panel included Olga Khokhryakova, a PhD candidate in sports management at Louisiana State University, Niko Emack, an Emerson communication studies professor, and Steph Smyrl, the associate dean for student affairs and director of athletics at Emerson. The discussion was moderated by teach-in organizer Nejem Raheem.

After everyone in the intimate audience introduced themselves, Raheem gave some background information on the U.N.’s Brundtland Report. The report, from 1987, primarily found that sustainability requires “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

The panel then discussed this widely accepted criteria through the lens of athletics, both in the Emerson context and worldwide.

Smyrl spoke about her experience growing up playing soccer and as a Division I athlete at Stony Brook University, and Emack detailed his experience playing Division III soccer while he was a student at Emerson. They both use their lived experiences to help student athletes today.

Smyrl, who works extensively with Emerson’s student athletes, said that she values her role as a mentor and works to prioritize mental health awareness in the department.

Paul Pegher, the director of communications and operations in the School of Communication, asked the panel how they recommend balancing the competitive nature of athletics with its potential for social good.

“What we’ve started to talk about more is everything else right that happens in between [wins and losses], and how we can make sure that we’re supporting their mental health, ensuring that the students feel part of the larger picture,” Smyrl said. “Sometimes as athletes, we can get so focused on just that final result, when there are so many steps that are leading up to it.”

Though this issue isn’t something only administrators can help. The panelists all agreed while Emerson is primarily focused on the arts, the community as a whole should value its athletes as well.

“We’re in the diplomat building business, not the coaching business,” Emack added. “When we go to play other schools, [student athletes] are representing [Emerson’s] culture. What makes Emerson great is actually happening when the soccer team goes to play [other schools].”

Khokhryakova, who joined the panel on Zoom from LSU, spoke mostly about sports as a vehicle to invest in the SDGs. She talked about the Homeless World Cup, which is an annual soccer tournament with the purpose of changing mindsets around homelessness and decreasing global social isolation.

“They’re not trying to make athletes from every single person,” she said, “they’re creating a sense of community, … rebuilding social relations with others.”

Cate Schneiderman, the librarian for the School of Film, Television, and Media Arts, spoke about her three-year-old child and asked how to cultivate athletics for children while also recognizing that they don’t yet have the capacity to fully compete.

“I look at sports, especially for kids, as something more socially valuable rather than just activities or physical achievement-based,” she added.

Emack also spoke about the role of sports for young adults in a broader sense. 

“Name a problem in America, and I’ll tell you why it can be solved by sports,” he said. According to him, issues like the male loneliness epidemic, absent students in schools, and mental health can all be solved through the connections that sports provide.

“Going to practice is two hours a day where [athletes] practice mindfulness,” he added.

Last night, at the Bright Family Screening Room, passionate advocates for environmental justice gathered to view a screening of “To Use a Mountain” by filmmaker Casey Carter, a visceral documentary featuring communities affected by nuclear waste. 

The project started in 2018, four years after Carter researched Yucca Mountain in a college seminar at Middle Tennessee State University. This began a deep dive that focused on the government’s selection of nuclear testing sites and the struggles felt by the occupants of the land where they are performed. The areas chosen were either composed of minority groups or are low-income, which, to many impacted, are believed to be intentional.

Since the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed, the Department of Energy has been authorized to dispose of over 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. The sites chosen were inhabited by many indigenous, working-class, and rural communities, and in turn saw their land exploited, damaged, and stolen. Nine different sites throughout the United States were chosen as possible repository locations; Carter focused on six of those sites in his film, showcasing the resilience of locals who fought against the placement of nuclear waste near their homes and the contamination it would cause.

According to Carter, he chose “to follow the structure of the project”, which jumped from one site to another, so the order of focus was as follows: Dome, La.; Richton, Miss.; Davis Canyon, Utah; Deaf Smith, Texas; Hanford, Wash.; and Yucca Mountain, Nev. 

Each section of the film was unique and impactful through its personalized focus. 

Churchgoers in Richton had a strong connection to the seized land because it was first owned by their enslaved ancestors, while a uranium miner in Davis Canyon grew up surrounded by the substance, which was an integral part of the site. 

Ian Zabarte, a member of the Shoshone tribe in Nevada, is a lifelong advocate against the placement of nuclear waste in this nation’s territory, and said in the film that “a genocide began with the testing of weapons of mass destruction.” According to a treaty from 1863, the Shoshone tribe owns Yucca Mountain and the surrounding land, yet their ownership has been violated by the government in the years that followed.

Although each town has its own issues that arose from the testing, every ecosystem was damaged and contaminated, every human felt the effects of radiation, and every site was deemed unusable, except for one: Yucca Mountain.

Carter believes that the best way to dispose of the nuclear waste is through geological repositories, but needs “to involve consent, transparency, and sound science,” in order to be ethical. 

When asked about the future of nuclear waste, Carter informed the audience that nuclear testing is mentioned in Project 2025, the Republican Party’s plan for the future of the country that drew criticism across the political aisle ahead of last year’s election. Yucca Mountain is explicitly stated in the over 900-page document as a site for nuclear disposal, showing a continued disregard for the ownership of the mountain under the Shoshone Nation and the negative impact the chemicals have had on the environment. 

Amid the uncertainties and atrocities caused by the 1982 act, Carter’s documentary highlights each community’s resistance, which proves how effective citizens can be when fighting against harmful environmental laws. Past demonstrations have halted the government’s disposal of nuclear waste. Demonstrations are still happening today throughout the country to prevent the continuation of repository sites, which Carter said “is the best way to make their voices heard.”