When Melody Chang ’12 and Josh Levine ’12 put up signs around 200 Church encouraging residents to conserve water, they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. The signs incited an unintended backlash—particularly one suggesting, “if it’s yellow, let it mellow…” Chang and Levine resolved to defend the signs and their message during that week’s house meeting, but this too proved controversial.

“The thing is, water doesn’t disappear, it’s coming back,” Levine said, regarding the issue of water contamination. “There were a lot of moments where we thought maybe it’s not important. It became a really heated discussion—we talked about privacy and comfort levels and left the meeting furious.”

Frustrated but unshaken, Chang and Levine, who both spent their summers working on sustainability issues, continued researching and discussing this issue, among other environmental topics, throughout the semester. Chang enrolled in a student forum on food in Connecticut and the two explored the various courses and student groups already present on campus. Soon, however, they reached the same conclusion: signs can only do so much. Both said they were disappointed by the lack of cohesiveness among pro-environmental groups on campus.

“I was an idealist, I thought it would be more united,” Chang said. “I do believe Wesleyan students are engaged, but they are plugging it in at different points. We found out that the smallest thing, like putting up a sign, [could bring] up a lot of big issues. To have such an uproar was a huge red flag to us.”

Nadeem Modan ’10 came to a similar conclusion about an entirely different topic: Volunteerism in India. After volunteering for an NGO in India, Modan wanted to discuss the dynamics he had witnessed further, but found that no Wesleyan courses that dealt with the issue.
“There are a lot of concerns that come with the volunteering abroad phenomenon and the power dynamics of a person from the West trying to change the world,” Modan said. “When I was there people were very welcoming, some were suspicious, but overall the feeling was curiosity.”

Ilaria Wolfe’s experience abroad also left her wanting to share what she learned with others. For Wolfe, this meant music. After graduating high school, she lived in the Republic of Georgia for six months, where she learned the language and developed a liking for Georgian music. At Wesleyan, Wolfe and a friend who had accompanied her in Georgia joined Slavei, the Balkan a cappella group, and taught the singers some Georgian songs. Last semester, Wolfe and a few friends also started singing from a Georgian chant book and organized a Georgian Orthodox Vespers service on campus with a priest from Meriden—Wolfe sang in Georgian, while the priest led the rest of the service in English.

“Although Georgian music is very different from Balkan music, we found it to be a nice balance of sharp dissonance [Balkan] and heavy, earthly music [Georgian],” she said. “[My friend] Michael and I really wanted to be able to sing more of the folk music as well as the chant. I don’t have as much of the folk music written out, since it is an oral tradition and doesn’t fit well into western notation.”

All three interest groups found themselves wanting to share and explore their interests with the greater Wesleyan community, and all fell upon the same solution: a student forum. According to the Office of the University Registrar, any student may propose a forum, provided that the course is not offered by a regular department or program. The proposal includes an outline of the topic, readings, assignments and its purpose, and finally a faculty sponsor. The student then submits their proposal to that faculty sponsor and to the chair of the department, as well as Academic Affairs, all of whom must sign off on the proposal for the course to be taught. If approved, up to 15 students can enroll in the forum for credit.

Mariel Matze ’10 was one of those students. She registered for Modan’s forum “Dynamics of Social Change and Volunteerism in India” after a year of working for the same NGO as Modan. The NGO, IndoAmerican Volunteer Networks, is a soon-to-be nonprofit that connects American volunteers with Indian NGOs.

“The forum was kind of a brainchild from that organization,” Matze said. “After some of us came back from Ahmedabad, India last summer, we realized that there’s a lot to think about and be aware of, both for the sake of the NGO and the volunteer. A student forum seemed like an ideal atmosphere to facilitate that discussion.”

Although some students use forums to jumpstart their majors or theses, Modan, a religion major, saw the forum as part of a larger effort.
“The forum was not designed to create a major, but to discuss a topic that’s current and relevant,” Modan said. “The goal was to study social change and see where volunteerism fits into the picture.”

For Wolfe, who started the forum “Vocal Music from the Republic of Georgia,” the motivation, just like the enrollment process, was a bit different; students had to audition at the beginning of the semester in order to be enrolled. Seven students, not including Wolfe and her co-teacher Michael Vitale, were chosen to enroll in the class. Though one of the goals of the forum is to educate students about Georgian music and culture, the forum was also a recruitment tool for finding more students to sing with on campus. The students have to learn all the music by ear, and Wolfe said the small class size has made it easier to create an authentic Georgian sound.

“I have a big collection of Georgian recordings, and the project for the semester is for everyone to learn the songs and teach them to the rest of the group,” Wolfe said. “We are also focusing a lot on creating a Georgian sound, an important aspect that is often neglected by groups such as the Wesleyan Spirits who perform the notes, but do not closely imitate the style of music.”

For the third set of forum leaders, Chang and Levine, a student forum was a way to continue the debate about sustainability in a more objective setting: the classroom. Their forum, entitled “The Past, Present, and Future of Sustainability,” is taught chronologically and thematically, from systems (food, water, waste, etc.) to human extinction.

“These are some of the most relevant, dire, and urgent questions I can think of, and they could affect so many people in the most horrific way,” Chang said. “[We don’t know] whether or not we’ll walk out at the end of the semester and have any solutions, but it’s a way to begin thinking about it.”