University students have discovered assisting with oil spill relief efforts isn’t as easy as they hoped.
Jonathan Carpenter, conservation biology senior, formed the Student Coalition to Help the Oil Leak Relief — or SCHOLR — four days after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and has since been trying to find ways to get students actively involved.
Carpenter said he put together a forum in May with members from campus organizations like the Environmental Conservation Organization, the Naturalists Club and Geology Club to develop a plan of action for SCHOLR.
“When it first happened, I wanted to contact all the people that I knew and that I knew would care,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter said the coalition suffered some setbacks during the summer, either because of members leaving for internships or because of government red tape.
Carpenter said the opportunity for students to get hands-on volunteer opportunities was limited despite seeing an immediate student response on Facebook and collecting more than 1,000 members in a matter of days.
“We found out the volunteers had to be trained and certified,” Carpenter said. “So our next goal was to get trainers to come to us.”
Carpenter said he has contacted leaders from various environmental clubs on campus to form a University-wide relief effort.
“We’re at a University that has a lot of different clubs,” he said. “This is what we do all the time — it’s our lives. I also think people expected something from us, too.”
Katherine Boy Skipsey, mass communication junior and vice president of SCHOLR, said the beginning of the efforts was an exciting time.
“This is our state, this is our problem, and we wanted people to realize it is also LSU’s problem,” Boy Skipsey said.
Carpenter said BP contacted SCHOLR and agreed to send trainers, but the agreement was never honored.
“They said they’d send us trainers if we agreed not to talk bad about them,” Carpenter said. “Suddenly their phone number doesn’t work anymore, and we’ve been blacklisted by BP.”
Carpenter said he didn’t know for sure why BP blacklisted the coalition.
“I think it was our size. We are one of the biggest student groups in the U.S.,” Boy Skipsey said. “BP is going to protect the last of their image, and they probably see us as a threat.”
Carpenter said the coalition has since sought other means of remaining active.
SCHOLR led a two-day rally in June at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, where about 80 people attended, Carpenter said.
“We were trying to make an impression on our state senators and legislators,” he said. “We actually got a resolution passed to try and look for clean energy jobs.”
The coalition also bought the rights to the documentary “Black Wave,” a film about the impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the Alaska coast, and has screened the film on and off campus.
Carpenter said he screened the film in June for a group of local fishermen in Grand Isle.
“No one got up or left during the entire film,” he said. “At the end, you could see they had tears in their eyes.”
Carpenter, who regularly conducts bird surveys in Grand Isle for University researchers, said he expects more volunteer opportunities this fall.
“We are entering the next stage of the oil problem, which is restoration,” he said. “Efforts are going to be focused on marsh work and replanting grass.”
Because replanting the marsh won’t require access to public beaches, students should be able to help more readily and without certification, Carpenter said.
“We have the opportunity to replenish the marshlands,” said Jenny Byrd, co-president of ECO. “They have the grasses, and they just need the manpower.”
Boy Skipsey said these opportunities will be ideal for students interested in helping.
“That’s the perfect thing for SCHOLR — getting hands-on experience and not just seeing it on TV,” she said. “LSU has the resources to focus on this kind of stuff. If we won’t care about it, who will?”
Carpenter said SCHOLR’s efforts will not end anytime soon.
“The oil doesn’t just disappear,” he said. “We have yet to see the long-lasting effects.”
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Contact Sarah Eddington at [email protected]