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The Dartmouth
July 25, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

‘Green' orgs. stage sit-in outside of Kim's office

More than 30 students held a sit-in outside of College President Jim Yong Kim's office on Thursday to bring attention to the need for sustainability on campus. The sit-in, which lasted approximately 40 minutes, ended when students spoke with Kim and presented him with a letter suggesting changes to the College's current approach to sustainability, according to students who participated in the event.

The letter urged Kim with to appoint an energy research and advisory committee, providing more staff support for sustainability initiatives and making sustainability efforts a "core part of Dartmouth's next capital campaign."

The sit-in was held to coincide with Climate Awareness Day, according to Tim Bolger '10, one of the effort's leaders and co-chair of the Dartmouth Council on Climate Change.

The group of students decided to stage the sit-in after being told that they could not schedule a formal meeting with Kim before Winter term. The Thursday meeting with Kim lasted approximately five minutes, participant Dan Susman '10 said.

"We wanted to get his attention to issues of climate change and sustainability because we're worried that the College isn't doing anything about these things," Susman said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "There are some people dedicated to it, but not enough."

The students walked into Kim's office at 3:50 p.m., a reference to the Dartmouth Council on Climate Change's 350" Campaign an effort to raise awareness about the high atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. After Kim's administrative assistants told the group to leave because Kim was in a meeting, approximately half the students remained in the lobby of Kim's office while the others sat along the walls of Parkhurst Hall's second floor. The students told Kim's assistants that they would wait indefinitely, Susman said.

"We wanted to show Kim that the passion is already here," Dartmouth Council on Climate Change co-chair Jessica Rush '10 said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Kim came out of his office at approximately 4:30 p.m. to talk with the students.

"He seemed to embrace what we were saying to him," Bolger said in an interview with The Dartmouth.

Kim told the group that there is no reason Dartmouth cannot be the "greenest" college in the world, Bolger said.

Most of the students were pleased with Kim's reaction, Rush said.

"He received us so well, was so calm and collected," Rush said, later adding, "We could tell he was really listening."

Bolger said Kim "tried to turn everything around" on the students, urging them to take initiative and create change. Students had hoped that Kim would get involved, Susman said.

"For him to say, I want to make Dartmouth the greenest college in the world' and then not put money into it, I think it's a false statement, or misleading," Bolger said. "But I think he is someone who takes this issue seriously. And we hope that we can move forward here at Dartmouth with our energy."

Kim agreed to meet with students again at 8 a.m. on Friday.

Bolger said the group will reiterate the points in its letter during the meeting and will stress that the College has a responsibility to improve its sustainability.

"If you look at all the other Ivy League schools, Dartmouth is very far behind in terms of a goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," Bolger said, later adding, "We have two people in the sustainability office we need more people to step up to the plate. The good news is that we can do it cost efficiently."

Despite the students' efforts to keep the sit-in low key, Kim's assistants appeared taken aback by the number of people participating, according to students at the event. Before Kim emerged from his meeting, senior vice president Steven Kadish, who also serves as Kim's strategic adviser, and assistant provost Elizabeth Bankert tried to convince students to leave, Susman said.

"It was interesting how uncomfortable they were with having students in that office," Susman said. "The vice president, the secretaries, the assistant provost all of them were visibly uncomfortable. They were trying to do anything they could to get us out."

Rush said she understood why the situation would make the administrators uncomfortable.

"They were really nice, but I think, as would be expected, they felt a little bit threatened by being bombarded by so many people," Rush said. "You could see that their eyes got a little bigger as more and more students walked in."

Susman said the group was inspired to stage the sit-in because of an interview Kim gave in Dartmouth Life in which he said he wanted students "to symbolically storm Parkhurst."

"In the spirit of the students that took over Parkhurst in protest of the Vietnam War and built slums on the Green to protest apartheid, we accept your challenge to take on the world's problems as our own with the belief that as committed and passionate individuals we can promote positive and lasting change," the group wrote in the letter.