Letter from the President
You’ve done it before — I have, too. There is a container in your hand that you know should be washed out and put in a recycling bin, but doing so is not convenient. So there it goes, into the trash, to be dumped in a landfill where it can spend the next 500 years decomposing next to the other mountains of garbage. The way in which we treat the Earth, through our individual decisions, connects over and over again to the collective future of human life on this planet. And even though we know this intellectually, we still, too often, prioritize convenience and ourselves over the good of everyone in an environmentally, equally viable future.
Wrestling with the tension of the “good of the many versus the good of the few” offers us opportunities to consider our connectedness to everyone living and to the one environment we share. Through study and research, through discussion and experimentation, through writing and community action plans, we at Framingham State are working to create solutions to the problems created by humanity’s climate-related practices and policies. By joining the work of our equally concerned global citizens, we are contributing to the future of our world, hoping that together we may create a planet whose scarce resources are available to everyone.
Every part of Framingham State is connected, somehow, to this work. The face of a changing climate seems purely scientific, but as our faculty, staff and students know, working with the science of climate change translates, for example, to writing, to food availability and nutrition, to the availability of water, to business development and to housing. The projects that you’ll read about in this issue illustrate the ways in which our colleagues are contributing to the good of the many. Underlying all of this inquiry lie questions of equity and justice: Who will have access to the Earth’s finite resources as they become scarcer? How do we see that playing out in the communities in which we live? What can we do?
I am so proud to be part of an institution that knows — and demonstrates — that the only way forward is through united action. FSU was born to serve the public good — and public continues to mean for the good of everyone.
Warmly,
PresidentFramingham State University
