The Rhode Island Student Climate Coalition restarted as an intercollegiate organization focused on climate justice and action this semester.
RISCC is now active and recruiting new members, according to University of Rhode Island fourth-year student Shannon McGrath, co-policy team lead for RISCC. The organization’s two main campaigns for this session are saving the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority from route cuts and holding the State House accountable for its commitment to the 2021 Act on Climate legislation.
RISCC was active from around 2018-2020 but went on hiatus due to COVID-19, according to University of Rhode Island fourth-year student Kalli Marek, co-policy team lead alongside McGrath. Two Brown University students began working on bringing the organization back to life last spring.
“Otherwise, there’s been no intercollegiate organization focused on climate in the state,” Marek said.
Miko Lehnert and Theo Pfeiffer, the two Brown University student coordinators, reached out to their friends and connections at other Rhode Island universities who are passionate about climate action, including Marek and McGrath.
The organization is split into four teams–policy, newsletter, outreach and media–that are each leading individual projects to support the RIPTA and Act on Climate campaigns.
The policy team is putting together a Google Sheet of how each participating RI campus funds RIPTA: fully, discounted pricing or none at all, according to McGrath. The newsletter team is tracking student accounts from RIPTA route cuts, along with what students want to see from the Act on Climate legislation and the Executive Climate Change Coordinating Council, a governmental body established in 2007.
The council has taken on a much larger role now, as it is the board responsible for meeting the Act on Climate’s goals of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to Marek.
As for how RISCC manages the logistics of working across multiple universities, Marek said the organization focuses on constant recruitment.
“Getting across campuses has really relied on having really key individual players at every school,” Marek said.
RISCC has student members from URI, Brown, Providence College, Roger Williams University, Salve Regina University and Rhode Island College, according to McGrath. They are still looking to recruit students from more universities, such as Bryant University.
Although she cannot speak for RISCC as a whole, McGrath said that her role in fighting climate injustice stems from receiving a higher education that some other constituents may not have.
“I feel like we’re very informed, but getting plugged into the State House and having a voice of action as a group is really important,” McGrath said.
Students should not feel limited by their current position or hold a belief that they are incapable of enacting real change, according to Marek.
“We’ve been having meetings with legislators, we’re going to be hosting lobby days and going to the State House to testify, and there’s real opportunity here for us to prove that we care and that we are capable of really pushing for good change,” Marek said. “This is our future; this is our lives–we mean business.”
RISCC’s general body meetings are held biweekly on Mondays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., alternating between PC’s Smith Hill Annex and URI’s 193 Coffeehouse. The organization can be found @risccoalition on Instagram.
