Sometimes you have to create a new class to be able to think outside the box. Faculty merely oversee the student forum courses; they are chiefly the work of student leaders willing to undertake the significant preparatory work.

Past forum groups have centered on subjects as experimental music, the female body, Harry Potter, and Long Lane Farm. There are two student forum groups being offered this semester: Sustainable Living (BIOL 419) and Sustainable Energy in Haryana, India (SISP 419).

The Sustainable Living forum, led by Nicole Grijnsztein ’07, grew out of the frustrations expressed at Earth House Meetings.

“By the time we got through house business, there was little time to devote to discussing wider concerns of the nature of sustainability and our house[‘s] role in that,” said Grijnsztein. “We were trying to tackle it in brain-storming-type discussions, without any real rigor or methodical approach, and had a hard time focusing after hour-plus talks.”

Grijnsztein created the forum in the hopes that members of ecologically- minded groups such as Earth House or the Environmental Organizers’ Network (EON) could address larger-scale issues that they have been too busy to address in the past. The option of receiving credit has been a powerful incentive; the forum has succeeded in increasing long-term participation where discussions facilitated by Earth House have failed.

Anjali Saxena’06 and Becca Linden ’06, leaders of the Sustainable Energy in Haryana, India group were similarly motivated by hopes of increased activism when they moved to transform their Wesleyan chapter of Engineers Without Borders into a student forum.

The main goal of the Sustainable Energy in Haryana, India group is to design and implement solar-powered water pumps (created by student engineers at the University of Hartford) in a small village outside of New Delhi, India. In addition to issues of development and infrastructure, the forum’s focus includes questions of caste and gender in relation to sustainability.

“It’s something very new that hasn’t really been done in the structure of a forum before, and that poses a challenge,” said Hanna Senesac ’06. “We’re trying to do something that has an impact outside of the Wesleyan community. I’ve been really impressed by how well we’ve been able to work togethe—it’s produced something that none of us could have done by ourselves.”

The forum has recently split up into sections in order to tackle all of the issues that will be addressed in the implementation plan, to be completed by the end of the semester.

Conversely, the Sustainability Forum based in Earth House is chiefly concerned with uncovering tangible ways of maintaining a sustainable lifestyle on the household level.

“A lot of us, including myself, come out of not-so-sustainable American middle-class lifestyles, so it’s important that we educate ourselves and each other about other options,” said Margaret Trissel ’07, a participant in the forum who worked last summer on a small organic sheep farm in the Catskills. “We just have to acquaint ourselves with those manual skills,like farm work, food preparation and textile crafts, that we forgot at the advent of industrialized consumer culture.”

Participants in the Forum alternate in the Wednesday class, which is followed by a related activity on Sunday. Weekly topics have included local, seasonal diets, alternative health care, and sustainable building techniques. In their Sunday activity sessions, students have gone canoeing and taken a walking tour of edible plants.

A proposal for a student forum group must meet the academic deans’ standards for academic rigor. The student leaders, too, must prove that they have the organizational skills necessary to design a curriculum. Among other things, a proposal for a forum must contain a statement of purpose, a rationale, a list of qualifications of the student leaders, an outline of topics to be discussed, and a partial reading list. Interested students can pick up application forms and detailed instructions at the Office of the Registrar, and the proposal for the student forum must be submitted before the end of exams prior to the semester in which the forum will be offered.

“Student forum courses can augment the curriculum in areas where faculty may not have the time or expertise to teach the topic,” said Billy Weitzer, senior associate provost and dean of continuing studies. “In addition, students who develop student forum courses learn about all the aspects of the process of developing a course.”

“It’s been difficult at times, but really rewarding,” she said. “We definitely sympathize with our professors a little bit more.”