Alternative breaks to encourage advocacy for social justice issues

By ALAINA HAYES

Contributing Writer

During each break at Baldwin Wallace, student-led service groups travel and contribute volunteer work and advocacy for various social justice issues in communities experiencing adversity.

On each trip, called “alternative breaks,” students can expect to experience service work, travel, connectionbuilding and the development of new skills. The David and Francis Brain Center for Community Engagement upholds this tradition each school year.

“A.B. trips are a truly lifechanging experience where students learn how to grow through being comfortable in the uncomfortable,” said Cory Dulemba, a senior national security and criminal justice double major who will be coleading a trip this semester.

Sarah Pounder, a sophomore double major in psychology and sociology, led the “Strengthening a Community: An Act of Women’s Empower- ment” trip over the first week of the 2022 winter break.

The trip was built around the idea of wanting to give back to women’s shelters and a community that strives to build up women after getting hit with the overturning of Roe v. Wade last June.

“I believe that it is a social justice issue we can learn a lot from and bring new knowledge back to Baldwin Wallace because our campus does not do much for women’s empowerment,” Pounder told The Exponent prior to the trip. “I hope my participants build connections with each other and develop a greater understanding of strengthening a community and themselves.”

Pounder will also lead the 2023 spring break trip “Learning from the Past, For a Better Future.” This trip will explore the efforts of past civil rights activists as well as inspire the new generation to continue to fight for their rights and make an impact.

To ensure that students sign up for the service itself rather than a destination, the loca- tions of each trip are kept under wraps until students are accepted and attend a pre-trip meeting.

Junior public health majors

Manav Patel and Mehraeel Saleh co-lead the “Youth & Trauma” trip during winter break. This trip contained an insightful experience into the policies that directly affect youth and the social services that aim to help them.

Patel and Saleh’s second trip this school year, scheduled for this summer, features a handson experience in public health. The plan for this trip is to connect with public health professionals and foster community health through service in aiding vulnerable populations.

Senior exercise science major Jill Wood, the student director of alternative break trips, works consistently with each trip to ensure it is planned out ahead of time and can produce meaningful work and service to different communities.

“A.B. trips are a time for students to gather and do hands-on experience in a com- munity. It is a time for reflection, growth, and of course, service,” Wood said. “I believe all students and faculty should experience an A.B. trip as it truly is life-changing.”

The A.B. experience continues after the academic year ends, with many trips scheduled for the beginning of the 2023 summer break following final exams.

Sole Hall-Hamilton, a senior education and English double major, will lead the “Equitable Queer Communities in America: Creating Change to Enhance their Future” trip during the summer. This specific trip is a service opportunity that caters to the LGBTQ community. Throughout this experience, students will learn more about the policies and policy recommendations directly impacting LGBTQ individuals across the country.

Manimone Sengvoravong, a junior neuroscience major, and Dulemba will be coleading the “Vicious Cycle of Urban Poverty” summer trip.

“This trip is focused on learning about the attributes to urban poverty, packed with education on how our community can come together to help each other,” Sengvoravong said. “This trip is packed full of experiences that can be brought back to Berea – experiences that can change the world.”

The trip Sengvoravong and Dulemba have created will dive into the experiences of individuals who have experienced poverty firsthand and allow the participants to reflect on these hardships and extend service.

Wood said that organizing alternative break trips has provided valuable learning opportunities.

“I love helping the leaders’ ideas come to life, and I love helping them find the next generation of leaders and helping them create an amazing experience,” Wood said. “I have gained skills that will help me in the future, but I also feel my leaders have gained the same, if not more than me, from the experience.”

By SIMON SKOUTAS Managing Editor

With the help of so-called “dark money” groups, the Ohio legislature designed House Bill 507, a bill signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine on Jan. 6, which removes barriers for oil and gas drilling in state parks and defines natural gas as “green energy.”

The Environmental Protection Agency does not define natural gas as green energy but instead labels it under “conventional power,” including other fossil fuels.

David Krueger, a professor and sustainability program co-director, said natural gas is not clean energy but is better than other energy sources.

“I would say natural gas is not a source of clean energy because it emits carbon dioxide equivalent emissions,”

Krueger said. “It’s less bad than coal. That’s given, and it’s less bad than petroleum, so clearly, natural gas is going to be part of the energy mix.”

DeWine’s spokesman, Dan Tierney, told Cleveland.com that the language defining natural gas as green energy was a “symbolic” gesture, and that the designation does not have binding effects on regulations or funding.

“Given the language was symbolic or opinion language, the Governor made the decision that this provision was not worth vetoing the entire bill over,” Tierney said.

Tom Sutton, a political science professor, said that while the state defining natural gas as “green energy” does not currently have any impact, it could down the road.

“If any legislation from the federal government comes out that requires adherence to regulations of what is considered green energy, the state of Ohio could say this is green energy,” Sutton said.

The Energy and Policy Institute, a group that advocates for renewable energy while exposing information about utility and fossil fuel interests, obtained public documents showing how “dark money” groups aided the effort to redefine what it means for energy to be considered “green.” Dark money refers to funds raised to influence politics and legislation by nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose the source of their donations.

The dark money groups, The American Legislative Exchange Council and the Energy Empowerment alliance, an organization connected to the oil and gas industries, provided talking points and modeled legislation to lawmakers.

Sutton said A.L.E.C. has a long history of developing conservative legislation, including some states’ “stand your ground” laws, which remove the requirement of retreating before utilizing force in self-defense. Sutton lamented that Democrats do not employ similar strategies.

“My beef is not as much with them as with the Democrats who don’t seem to have an equivalent body doing the same,” Sutton said. “If the other side develops a new weapon, figure out how to do it yourself.”

Sutton said special interests have always had a place within the Ohio legislature, dating back to before the Gilded Age.

“When we talk about trustbusting from the Gilded Age, a lot of that had to do with statelevel lobbying by the same industry: energy,” Sutton said.

A spokesperson for the Ohio Senate’s majority caucus, John Fortney, told Cleveland.com that green energy takes away from the United States’ ability for energy independence.

“For the radical left, green energy is simply code for the color of money, and how it can use climate change scare tactics to fundraise millions of dollars while vilifying this country’s ability to be energy independent,” Fortney told Cleveland.com.

H.B. 507 is sometimes referred to as “the chicken bill” since the House initially passed it as a bill that affected the number of chickens that could be sold in lots. After the bill reached the senate, the natural gas provisions were tacked on.

Bride Rose Sweeney, the State Representative representing Berea who voted no on the