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CMU students expected in numbers at Global Climate Strike
Manitoba Youth for Climate Action's 'die-in' at Winnipeg's Canadian Museum for Human Rights on September 20
The world's youth have declared an international Week of Climate Action. In Manitoba, it all culminates Friday, September 27 on the steps of the Manitoba Legislature, where CMU students will add their voices to public outcry for a future and a hope.
With much of Southern Manitoba under a severe thunderstorm watch, dozens of Winnipeg youth including CMU students and alumni, gathered on Friday, September 20 on the steps of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to lay their bodies down in protest of a perilous future, thanks to climate change.
The student die-in, organized by Manitoba Youth for Climate Action, is just the beginning of what promises to be an eye-opening week of youth-led workshops, demonstrations, and peaceful civil-disobedience, all aimed at waking Canadian leaders up to their responsibilities in the fight against climate disaster. Everything is building to Friday's mass march on the legislature, and CMU is doing its part to support students in participating.
Vice President External, Terry Schellenberg, says CMU has "formally invited faculty awareness of this event, invited them to work with their classes as appropriate in support of those who want to participate in the strike—whether that means cancelling class, making allowances for student absence, or other options—and we have encouraged faculty to integrate these choices pedagogically into the work they are doing with students." Out of support, the university has also cancelled chapel next Friday, and is encouraging all students to attend one of the ecumenical prayer services being offered by churches across the city, in conjunction with the strike.
Wendy Kroeker is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies [PACTS], and Academic Director of the Canadian School of Peacebuilding. She has mandated participation in Climate Action Week for two of her classes. Her Intro PACTS students have a choice of four Climate Action events this week to attend and report on, which Kroeker says will "help them understand some of the things peace groups are doing to get out their messages." Her third year students, in Models of Peace and Conflict Transformation, have been assigned reading on climate change and a poster project designed to "crystalize their thinking, and the message they'd like to bring to the issue." Those students will present their posters in class on Wednesday, and bring them to the strike on Friday, where class has been scheduled to meet.
Tim Rogalsky, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has also cancelled class next Friday. He has informed his Introduction to Calculus students about the strike, and they have discussed it as a group. "I've let them know that I'll be there on Friday and why. I've also given them an assignment, where they're required to read two different articles pertaining to the mathematics of the current climate emergency. One is an impress of data on the impact of human activities over the last few decades, and the other is a graph of what's been changing, ecologically, over the last number of years—rising temperatures, melting icecaps, etc. Then, because it's a calculus class, I've asked them to do a little bit of estimating. How fast are things changing? I'm asking them each to write a reflection, on the findings and their personal opinions on this issue."
"I've made my stance clear, and I think I'm standing with the virtual scientific consensus, but not everyone agrees, and this is a university: we hold ourselves open to robust discussion and a variety of perspectives. So we'll be discussing their findings in class. I've also asked them to reflect on what gives them hope on this issue, as it can feel very hopeless sometimes."
Rogalsky speaks in tears over the phone, as he admits having done in class: "In the developing world, it's already hitting them now. Lives are being lost because of our selfishness, our commitment to these lives of luxury, and more will be lost unless we do something. We have to stop this, or it's all going to break. I've got grandkids," he says.
Rogalsky adds that he feels it is very important that students are leading this Week of Action, and that he is pleased to do all he can to support and participate in what they are generating. He has volunteered to help organize a bike jam in support of those students who want to attend the legislature rally next week.
While students and faculty assemble at the Legislature, members of the administration will be travelling to Sandy Saulteaux Spiritual Centre [SSSC] in Beausejour for a bundle exchange, which will formalize a new and growing relationship between CMU and SSSC. Furthermore, on Saturday, staff and alumni will gather with friends at Roseau River First Nation, to celebrate 10 years of relationship through CMU's Outtatown discipleship training school. CMU describes its commitments to decolonization, and to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, as an integral part of its institutional commitment to Climate Action.
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