Environmental Task Force final meeting of SP24 semester is ***canceled***

[Daniel Lipson]

Greetings, 

I am writing to let you know that our final Environmental Task Force meeting of the semester (scheduled for tomorrow) is canceled. Too much going on for me, and probably for many/most of you too! 

Here's a special shout out to Lucas P, Ashley V, Kayla C, and Wren K for all you did especially with the amazing Better Together event in February! Thanks to all the students, faculty and emeritus faculty, community members, and staff – including Eric Wood at NYPIRG!. Apologies if I left anyone out inadvertently! 

I hope the college Earth Day festival went great yesterday. 

At my end, I want to provide the fine EFT folks with just a couple of final updates of what I/we have been up to. I submitted our report of our programming and expenses to CAS last week. We ended up spending almost all of our alloted $1,650 budget this year by covering the catering expenses for both of the above-mentioned two events (Better Together and the Earth Day festival). We do have approximately $30 left in our budget, so let me know if any student-related activities could benefit from this pocket change! The report is also about requesting funding for the upcoming year, and I am hopeful that our programming expenses will satisfy CAS. After all, they want ETF to spend its budget on student-related programming, and CAS also values Sodexo catering especially given that it is the CAS board that chose Sodexo as the food services provider and that oversees Sodexo. 

For the students, it would be very helpful if you could let me know who will be taking on leadership roles during the upcoming academic year for EcoAllies, Outing Club, and any other related student organizations. And spreading the word about the good work we do at ETF is always appreciated. 

Finally, I want to give a big ,huge shout out to longtime co-chair Mike Boms. Mike is still co-chair and we'd love to have him as co-chair as long as we can keep him. But Mike is also now the elected Hurley town supervisor! On top of everything else he is juggling, it is entirely understandable that he has not been able to be as active with ETF as he previously was. 

Which leads me to a pitch: I am looking for a co-chair (it could be a faculty member or instructor; it could be someone in staff or even administration; or in rare cases it could even be a community member or even conceivably a student). This could entail being a third co-chair if Mike stays on. Or it could entail replacing Mike if he's ready to pass the baton. Funnel any suggestions my way – it would only help ETF to be more effective at growing environmental sustainability and resiliency initiatives on our fine campus and community! 

Good luck finishing up the school year, and keep in touch! 

Best,

Dan

— 

Daniel Lipson, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of Political Science | SUNY New Paltz | hawksites.newpaltz.edu/lipsond | lip...@newpaltz.edu