Founded in the fall of 2024, People of the Environment delves into topics at the intersection of the arts and the environment. 

Love science, the arts, and working to save the planet? If so, check out POTE (People of the Environment), a new interdisciplinary club on campus! Founded by undergraduate students with a shared passion for the environment, the club strives to foster connections between “nature” and “human nature.” Unlike many clubs, POTE doesn’t focus on just one field of study but rather a combination of environmental science and humanities. 

The club engages students at this intersection through discussions, a blog, and a biannual magazine. POTE’s student leaders host discussions during weekly meetings divided into two parts: conversation and workshops. Recent conversation topics include the Landback Movement and the Anthropocene. These meetings highlighted the environmental justice of restoring land back to indigenous people and humans’ impact on the earth’s geological record. 

During workshops, students propose blog post ideas and provide feedback to one another. The common denominator of these posts is how they merge mediums to make arguments about specific environments. From poems about Still Life with Poppy, Insects, and Reptiles by Otto Marseus van Schrieck to photographs of rainy NYC and San Francisco, the posts provide opportunities for busy college students to pause and reflect on aspects of nature that might otherwise go unnoticed. 

At the end of this semester, POTE’s student leaders plan to compile these blog posts into a magazine highlighting their members’ creativity as well as their artistic and scientific analyses. This collection will showcase the club’s hope of connecting the individual to the natural. 

Throughout each of these steps, POTE encourages unlearning “human exceptionalism,” a concept covered in their discussion on the Anthropocene. As defined at their meeting, this concept includes “the view that humans are entirely separate from nature, instead of a part of its ecological system.” In this age of cellphones and rapid climate change, dialogues like these are more important than ever.  

People of the Environment is a true example of Columbia’s interdisciplinary culture, where the arts and sciences are not mutually exclusive. Not only does it spotlight a significant subject, but it also allows students to be innovative and inventive in their ideas. It’s a club with a clever concept and rich conversations. Attend a meeting, check out the POTE website, and join the dialogue on how nature and human nature converge. You won’t be disappointed.  

Header via People Of The Environment