Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 13

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 13
Tuesday, October 25, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Tackling Tough Topics Together spurs dialogue
By KAREN KONKOLY
B&W Staff
Walk in to a Tackling Tough
Topics Together discussion session,
and the room will be abuzz with
conversation. At this new series,
hosted by the Council for Equitable
Community, members from diverse
corners of the Lehigh community
come together to practice talking
about topics that might not com-monly
arise in other day-to-day
interactions.
“Every time something hap-pens
on campus, or in the world,
there’s an email that goes out say-ing
that we need to have some
dialogue,” said psychology professor
Christopher Burke, a member of the
CEC education and dialogue work-ing
group that organized the event.
“But we don’t have dialogue. People
don’t talk about these topics because
they’re difficult.”
At the first session Oct. 14, par-ticipants
discussed the topic of iden-tity.
Some 25 Lehigh students, fac-ulty,
staff and affiliates paired off
into small groups to discuss the
various identities that define them
and misconceptions others might
have about those identities.
Jessica Liu, a graduate student
who attended the event, said she
valued the conversation she had
because it enabled her to learn
about others’ diverse experiences
firsthand.
“There’s a lot of talking about
diversity, and talking about talking
about diversity,” Liu said. “It was
good to have an open discussion
about thought-provoking and per-sonal
experiences that wasn’t intel-lectualized
or theoretical.”
According to preliminary findings
from last year’s campus climate sur-vey,
different groups on campus are
having vastly different experiences
at Lehigh.
“Faculty, staff and students all
have different experiences on our
campus — some good, some not so
Ashley Quidolit/B&W Staff
Deyi Zhang, ’16, and Ben Felzer, a professor of earth and environmental sciences, participate in the Tackling Tough Topics Together event Oct.
14 in Williams Hall. The event, facilitated by psychology professor Christopher Burke, focused on practicing proper techniques when discussing
challenging social issues.
See CEC Page 4
Green Action holds divestment protest Julián Castro
encourages
students to
vote for Clinton
Courtesy of the Green Action Facebook page
Members of the Green Action club hold a rally last Thursday on the UC Front Lawn. Green Action
wants Lehigh University to divest from fossil fuel companies and instead invest in renewable
energy companies.
By DANIELLE BETTERMANN
Associate Lifestyle Editor
A new program hosted by
the Council for Equitable
Community encourages
conversation about
difficult issues
Shouted speeches and chants were
heard from the UC Front Lawn as
the Green Action club held a protest
Thursday to rally against Lehigh’s
investment in the fossil fuel indus-try.
Lehigh invests a percentage of
its $1.2 billion endowment into the
fossil fuel industry. Although the
numbers are not public, divestment
chairperson Andrew Goldman, ’19,
believes it is roughly 7 percent of the
endowment.
Goldman said Lehigh’s invest-ment
in this industry both plays a
part in harming the environment
and also is not economically viable
for the school. He said the renew-able
energy industry is doing better
now than the fossil fuel industry.
“Renewable energy is growing, fos-sil
fuels are falling, coal is bankrupt
and even economically it doesn’t
make sense to be invested in fossil
fuels,” Goldman said.
According to the International
Energy Agency, about 70 percent of
energy supply investments in 2013
were related to the fossil fuel indus-try,
whether it be in the extraction,
transport or transformation of oil,
gas or coal. Green Action is looking
for Lehigh to be a leader in a shift to
renewable energy investments.
“Universities have a fundamen-tal
obligation — it should be in
the DNA of the university to be
forward-looking and protective of
society and to represent the unrep-resented,”
said Al Wurth, a political
science professor who is the head of
the Environmental Initiative and
the club adviser for Green Action.
“It’s silly to expect the average per-son
to lead on this, someone has to
See PROTEST Page 2
By EM OKREPKIE
Editorial Pages Editor
When Julián Castro, the United
States secretary of housing and
urban development, graduat-ed
from Stanford University in
1996, he had about $18,000 in
debt. Now, he’s voting for Hillary
Clinton in part because of her
plans to make college more afford-able
and reduce student debt.
Castro explained why he
believes Clinton should be pres-ident
when he spoke to Lehigh
students and members of the com-munity
at Deja Brew in South
Bethlehem this afternoon. He said
she is the best candidate to ensure
Americans are safe in a “danger-ous
world,” and he emphasized
the importance of her plans to
create educational opportunities
for students.
“It’s all about, for this genera-tion,
who is going to create great
opportunity in this country,”
See CASTRO Page 2