BEREA COLLEGE THE 2001–2002 PRESIDENT’S REPORT President’s Letter Dear Friends: My reflections this year, “Living Upstream,” draw their inspiration from a book by Sandra Steingraber titled Living Downstream. In my message that follows, I suggest that Berea College—and all of us—now, more than ever before, must operate from a “living upstream” perspective. Such a mindset requires us to be proactive, rather than reactive. It requires us to adapt to the current global challenges with a perspective that considers future consequences. Such a mindset also requires that we put forth effort, just as swimming against the current requires. Berea College has a long tradition of going against the current, even when the water was deep and rough. In founding Berea College, Reverend John G. Fee and others “swam upstream” against strong pro-slavery opposing currents to establish a place where all people—black and white, women and men—could learn and work and serve together. To appropriately extend Berea’s legacy today, we must adopt an upstream perspective and adapt to changing global currents, not only for the benefit of students we currently serve but also to ensure those downstream in the future will have access to the Berea College experience. The trustees of Berea College in the 1920s were adaptive thinkers when they established a policy to place all unrestricted bequests into the College’s endowment. This policy, which we continue to follow, has created an endowment that funds 74% of our operating budget, allowing us to provide full-tuition scholarships to all of Berea’s students. Most liberal arts colleges , unlike Berea, fund 70-80% of their operating budgets by charging tuition. However, at Berea, our endowment is truly a “tuition replacement fund.” This is a unique way to fund an excellent Berea College program, but it makes us vulnerable to the uncommon downturn in the financial markets that has persisted for the past thirty months. Even with wise asset allocations, using a twelve-quarter trailing average for our 5% spending formula, and frugal budgeting, Berea College finds itself facing some very lean years ahead. In fact, budget cuts of more than $2 million over this year and next are already a necessity. We will practice "creative and adaptive learning" (see the message that follows) in reorganizing our programs and adapting to the new external financial circumstances. But we cannot swim upstream alone. We will especially need the annual contributions from Berea’s alumni and friends that fund the additional 13% of our operating budget. With your help, we can continue to swim upstream in doing what no other college in America does— provide an excellent education to very capable students who have financial need—and to do so without charging them tuition. Do help us to live upstream. Cordially, Larry D. Shinn President Berea College President’s Message “Living Upstream” In Dr. Sandra Steingraber’s scientifically genetic roots of many cancers, if adoptive persuasive, and powerfully written book called parents die from cancer before the age of 50, Living Downstream (1998), she offers a literal their adopted children have a five times greater and figurative portrayal of what it means to chance of getting cancer than if the children’s live downstream from agricultural, industrial, natural parents contract cancer. These and other and other forms of pollution. A biologist and a such studies suggest that the carcinogenic victim of bladder cancer caused most likely by power of a child’s living environment is environmental conditions, Dr. Steingraber stronger than their genetic inheritance. develops a convincing case that our bodies are A wide array of research findings and carrying a collective toxic chemical burden that conclusions are presented in Living threatens our health and, especially, that of our Downstream that include the following: children. She describes the creation of toxic dioxins as the by-products of burning 1. Cancer rates have skyrocketed by household garbage, hazardous waste, and 49.3% from 1950 to 1991, and even industrial processes. She then presents numerous with the removal of lung cancer, which case studies and scientific descriptions of the is usually a smoker’s (i.e., a lifestyle) ways in which these dioxins and other disease, cancer rates still went up by 35%; hydrocarbons are transmitted to our bodies 2. While 25% of Americans in 1950 could through the air, water, and soil. expect to contract cancer during their At one point in her studies, she returns lifetimes, the rate was 40% in the year home to her native Illinois to examine the 2000; pollution of rivers and underground aquifers 3. Workers in polyvinyl chloride factories by agricultural and industrial chemicals such as that produce children’s toys, credit atrazine, DDT, and PCBs, and she questions cards, lawn furniture, and food packaging why a disproportionate percentage of her materials have a 3,000 times higher family and community were susceptible to incidence of liver cancer than the cancer. She learned that in 1993, 91% of general population; Illinois rivers and two of the four wells serving 4. We still make, use, sell, or import from her small town showed high levels of pesticide abroad more than 200 chemicals and contamination, especially of agricultural compounds that are listed by the EPA chemicals like atrazine. She then shows how as carcinogens likely to cause cancer; such chemicals are linked with the types of 5. DDT and PCBs create cumulative toxic cancer that have a higher incidence in her burdens in their fish hosts such that fish family and community. The studies and evidence in 40% of the rivers in America are she uses support the World Health Organization’s inedible; and conclusion that as much as 80% of all cancers 6. Due to such pervasive environmental are environmentally caused. One supporting pollution, a study in the early 1990s example is the incidence of cancer in adopted revealed that the breast tissue of 25% of children. Counter to common beliefs about the nursing mothers carried a toxic burden 1 so high that their milk did not pass FDA minimums for chemicals like DDT and PCBs. In this brief presentation, it is impossible to fully describe the careful arguments, documented scientific Internationalization studies, and thoughtful conclusions that Living Downstream conveys. Reading this provocative study, Clara Garcia Rendon which links various cancers to their obvious or likely “I never realized that I was an international environmental causes, caused me (a) to reflect on the student before I came to Berea College,” critics of environmental studies like Steingraber’s and Mexico native Clara Garcia Rendon, ’03, says. (b) to think in new ways about living upstream on the “I was never Clara, the Mexican. At Berea, I have come to understand what diversity is.” rivers of life—-literally and metaphorically. A senior Spanish education major, from Even as I repeated the statistics and results of Coahuila, Mexico, Clara has been extremely studies in Steingraber’s book, I could hear a cacophony active in the international community at Berea. She is a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, as of critics’ voices. Regardless of the quality of any well as an English as a Second Language (ESL) ecological study, the preponderance of any evidence tutor for newly-arrived immigrants. of environmental degradation, or the rise in Her most recent endeavor has been to co- environmentally induced cancer rates, there are those found the Hispanic Student Association, a club which focuses on allowing its members to who cite other statistics and studies to refute all immerse themselves into the Hispanic culture. conclusions that suggest that the environment is She currently organizes weekly dance workshops worsening or that human health is imperiled—at least that culminate with a dance for participants to show off their new skills, as well as Spanish by environmental causes. Some critics will want to language tutoring sessions to assist those who say that even with Sandra Steingraber’s impressive are interested in learning or brushing up their and carefully researched work, there are too many Spanish skills. “We’re trying to learn about each gaps in scientific knowledge to link environmental other so that we understand one another,” Clara says. causes to various cancers for us to agree with her Clara recently took advantage of the many conclusions. One critic says she overly ignores the travel opportunities available through Berea lifestyle influences (such as diet) that are linked to College and spent part of her summer in Spain and France. “Experiencing other cultures has some of the cancers she analyzes. But even more to widened my perspective,” she explains. “I have the point, Bjorn Lomborg argues in his book The learned so much about myself. I tell my ESL Skeptical Environmentalist (2000) that the environment students, ‘it is important to remember where you come from, to be aware of your heritage. It is part is actually getting better, not worse. As a political of who you are, but not all that you can become.’” scientist and statistician, Lomborg recalculates the numbers and statistics used by international agencies and environmental groups around the world and argues that they are often misleading or incorrect. With the same passion he used when he was a member of Greenpeace, Lomborg belittles all claims of environmental pollution and actually argues that the land, air, and water on this earth are less polluted now than 25 years ago. And in refutation of Steingraber’s thesis, Lomborg says that most of the increase in cancer rates (which he does not dispute) can be attributed to increased longevity of the world’s 2 population. Though Lomborg’s study has been widely criticized by reputable scientists, his work continues to be widely read and used by environmental critics.