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In April 2013, Colby became one of the first colleges in the United States to achieve carbon neutrality. The College has now maintained carbon neutral status longer than any college or university in the country. 

According to Maddio LoDico, the College’s director of sustainability, environmentalism and sustainability have “always been very near and dear to Colby’s heart.” Reaching the goal of carbon neutrality “was definitely a labor of love,” LoDico said. Strategies involving the use of renewable energy resources, minimization of waste, and offsetting of emissions have allowed the College to reach and preserve carbon neutrality. 

Renewable energy makes up a large portion of the College’s sustainability efforts. Solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling, and a biomass plant are all in use on campus. 

The College owns a nine-acre solar farm consisting of 5,300 solar panels about a mile from campus, and there are also solar panels installed atop the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center that provide electricity for the building. The solar farm produces about 12% of the campus’s electricity needs. 

Two buildings on campus, the Schair-Swenson-Watson Alumni Center and the Davis Science Center, are heated and cooled using geothermal technologies. These buildings are the farthest from the College’s central heating system and rely completely on geothermal loop systems for temperature regulation. 

Members of the facilities team often refer to the biomass plant as the central heating plant. The plant uses locally-sourced woodchips and puts them through an intricate process of conveyer belts, augers, magnets, and boilers that LoDico describes as “essentially a very complex tea kettle” to provide the College with heat and hot water. 

Waste management and minimization also play important roles in the College’s constant working toward sustainability goals. This includes recycling, compost, and water efficiency. 

Recycling at the College is single-stream which means that if the item has a recycling symbol on it, it’s accepted in any recycling bin on campus. “We are the ones that get to decide the fate of our waste,” LoDico said, “and whether or not we want to take that extra second” to consider which bin to put it in.

In all of the dining halls, food waste is composted. After students put their plates on the conveyor belts to be washed, the food scraps are scraped into compost bags which are picked up and taken by a company called Agri-Cycle to facilities in Exeter. The anaerobic digestion process that occurs at these facilities releases gas which is used to spin an energy-producing turbine that powers the entire facility, as well as about 2,500 homes in the greater Bangor area. 

Reducing water waste has been a consistent effort for decades. In 2008, the College switched to trayless dining, saving about 79,000 gallons of water annually. Water fixtures such as sinks, showerheads, and toilets have all been updated to go above and beyond the energy efficiency standard for water waste reduction. 

LoDico has also been working on reviving old initiatives that are no longer in effect. A major endeavor that she and the EcoReps, a student group centered around sustainability projects, have been working on is bringing back the bikeshare program. Another fun initiative that LoDico is resuscitating is the inter-dorm energy saving competition, in which dorms compete for which dorm can expend the least energy within a given time frame. 

Students may have noticed the construction occurring on campus, and some may have noted that the College has major plans for much more construction in the coming years. But according to LoDico, “the crazy thing is…our carbon footprint’s still going down as we’re building these new buildings.” As the College continues to invest in new sustainable technologies and efficient building designs, it maintains its longstanding commitment to the environment. 

And for members of the Colby community left with questions, ideas, or criticism, the Office of Sustainability embraces open communication. “If anyone’s ever interested in doing some type of project, if they have questions about things,”  LoDico said, “I highly encourage them to reach out, because we’re here to talk.”

~ Anna Izquierdo `29

The Global Studies department hosted Professor Tanzeen Doha last Friday to present ethnographic research concerning Islamic tradition and global political violence. The talk, titled “Encountering Irreparable: Global War, Global Islam,” focused on two distinct historical events: the 2013 Shapla massacre in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the Rohingya migration waves of 2016 and 2017. Doha, an ethnographer and literary scholar, challenged the audience to reconsider how religious subjects navigate conditions of total devastation.

Professor Maple Raza introduced Doha, noting that his work examines the encounter between Islamic migrants and the helpers who assisted them at the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Doha began by discussing the 2013 protest in Dhaka, where state security forces killed numerous Islamic practitioners during a peaceful demonstration. He noted that most victims were students from Kaomi Madrasas, independent seminaries that often face secular suspicion under the logic of the global war on terror.                                                                                   

A central theme of Doha’s lecture was the concept of the encounter. He explained that the Bangladeshi security regime used the term “encounter and crossfire” to label extrajudicial killings of Muslims, misrepresenting reality to justify violence. In contrast, Doha defined his own ethnographic encounter as a process of internal transformation and the deconstruction of the divide between the researcher and the subject. He argued that this engagement reveals a loss that is “irreparable,” where no possibility of repair or return exists.

The second project Doha shared involved the Rohingya migration. He observed that during the 2016 and 2017 waves, voluntary Islamic groups in the Chittagong region organized relief efforts independently of international humanitarian agencies. Doha stated these activities fall outside the logic of liberal humanitarianism. Instead, these practitioners view the Rohingya as part of a “contemporary history of the present” that re-historicizes prophetic stories of migration.

Doha also discussed tearfulness as a “phenomenological dimension of living under a necropolitical regime.” He cited the Quran and Hadith literature, which frame tears as gifts from God and signs of closeness to the Most High. For Islamic practitioners confronting the irreparable, Doha argued that tearfulness serves as an ethical, political, and psycho-spiritual disposition that disrupts traditional arcs of discourse.

The talk concluded with a discussion of the scholarly debate between Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. Doha situated his research as a “third position” regarding how embodied traditions survive global crises. While Asad remains pessimistic about the survival of these traditions in a global system, Doha’s interlocutors demonstrate how Islamic discursive traditions provide the necessary tools to navigate catastrophe.

Following the lecture, questions were raised about the broader implications of his findings. Professor Britt Halvorson asked Doha to discuss how concepts like tearfulness and brokenness affect the capacity for agency and form social possibilities within Islamic tradition. Doha responded that though he focuses on the “death world” created by security regimes, his subjects find agency through their commitment to traditional practices even in fragments.

Professor Nadia El-Shaarawi asked why centering emotion and felt experience is important for his ethnographic approach, especially when dealing with subjects of violence. Doha explained emotionality serves as an exterior interaction rather than a purely interior state. He argued that tapping into felt experiences captures the “excess” of human experience that language often fails to convey.

~ Stephen Owusu Badu `27

This article was written in response to “Land Grant Universities” by Michael Banerjee, published in Washington University Law Review Online on Jan. 19, 2026.

For more than 200 years, the College has stood above the Kennebec River, and for about a century, Miller Library has been a fixture among its rolling hills. In Waterville, the College is both a landmark and a lifeline, a place defined for its rigorous classes and ringing Lomier Chapel bells. The campus feels certain of itself, rooted. 

But roots reach deeper than architecture and bells. Beneath the lawns and stone foundations lies a longer story, one that stretches back years before the first brick was even laid. Long before students crossed the hill from class to class, the land was home to the Wabanaki people. 

Between 1815 and 1861, the College received over 52,000 acres through two large land grants from state governments. In 1815, Massachusetts awarded 29,164 acres to what was then the Maine Literary and Theological Institution. Nearly five decades later, in 1861, the newly independent state of Maine granted an additional 23,040 acres to the College. 

These numbers are similar to that of the acreage received by many universities under the Morrill Act of 1862, which was passed by Congress and seen as landmark legislation for public education in the country. Through this act, each state would be granted 30,000 acres of land per congressional representative. States then sold these lands and used the proceeds to establish colleges and universities focused on agriculture, applied arts, and military science. 

Yet, the College has never identified with this land-grant heritage, and the history itself has remained largely vague. This raises considerations about how American universities and colleges are defined and categorized. 

The lands granted to the College, much like those distributed under the Morrill Act, were once Indigenous territory. The Wabanaki Confederacy—comprising the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq nations—has inhabited what is now Maine for over 10,000 years. Waterville itself sits on traditional Wabanaki land, where Indigenous communities sustained themselves through fishing, hunting, and agriculture along the Kennebec River for a duration of time long before European colonization.

Across the country, universities are looking into their own historical relationships with Indigenous peoples and lands. A 2020 investigation into Morrill Act–based institutions revealed that these universities collectively received nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous land, which created much wealth through sales and subsequent development. 

For the College, recognizing its land-grant origins could open new pathways for engagement with Wabanaki communities in Maine. Some universities have responded to similar histories by developing partnerships with tribal nations, creating educational programs that highlight Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, or establishing scholarship funds for Native students. Others have focused on land acknowledgments, historical research projects, or collaborative initiatives that benefit both the institution and Indigenous communities.

The Wabanaki nations maintain a significant presence in Maine today, with tribal communities working to preserve their languages, cultures, and sovereign rights while addressing modern challenges in education, economic development, and healthcare. Greater connection between Maine’s educational institutions and these communities could benefit both parties through shared knowledge and cultural exchange. 

The College’s story reflects broader patterns in American higher education. Like many institutions, its history intertwines with narratives of land distribution, Indigenous peoples, and the development of public education. Understanding these connections provides a fuller picture of how American colleges and universities came to be and the complex legacies they carry with them.

As conversations about institutional history and Indigenous relationships continue across the country, the College has an opportunity to contribute to this important dialogue. The land-grant heritage represents a significant part of its story, offering opportunities to understand the College’s foundations and explore connections with the communities whose lands contributed to its establishment.

~ Mia Dinunzio `28