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WHY I PROTESTED AT MY GRADUATION CEREMONY
November 01, 2019 by Extinction Rebellion
This October I graduated from Anglia Ruskin University with an MSc in Sustainability, achieving Distinction; but instead of feeling overjoyed, I felt numb.
I had hoped that 18 months of study would guide me toward climate solutions and a lucrative career, but instead it left me grieving in a world that no longer makes sense to me. I fear for the future my children face, and am overcome by a magnified sense of duty to do all that I can to highlight the crisis.
My graduation ceremony provided a perfect platform to demonstrate the sobering irony of the weight we give to higher education juxtaposed with willful ignorance toward climate academics who have spent decades studying their field.
A talented hat designer helped to create a mortar board with the Extinction Symbol on it, and a cloak from second-hand bits. Standing out in alarming bright pink against a sea of navy caps generated a few odd looks but I had prepared a placard that read: ‘Stand with me. Acknowledge our privilege and use our education to right the wrongs in this world and act on hard truths with courage and compassion’.
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This small gesture won’t make much of a difference on its own, but I hope it might inspire others to use all platforms to share this knowledge and help steer humanity toward a different path. It has also defined a need for me to help deliver climate and ecological education for all, through the not-for-profit I founded, Climate Emergency Action.
To support this new program text EDUCATE to 70970 to donate £5.