November 18, 2024

Written by STOP Fellowship Coordinator Roo Stewart

This year marks my second year as the Students Taking on Oil and Petrochemicals (STOP) Fellowship coordinator and three years since I myself was a STOP fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville! The time has flown, but looking back I can also see how much I, and the program, has grown. This fall we welcomed TEN students across the Ohio River Valley and Appalachia to the 2024-2025 STOP cohort. This is our largest cohort yet, up from just 6 students last year. We added two new schools in Kentucky (Morehead College and Centre College), deepened our connection with West Virginia schools (welcoming 2 students from WVSU and welcoming back Bethany College for the fourth consecutive year). You can meet all our lovely fellows here.

We also welcomed some new faces to the STOP leadership team–PLAN’s Director of Education & Resources, Jensen Quinn, and PLAN’s Advising Director, Rachael Hood! With STOP’s founder and fearless leader, Young Grguras, moving onto a new organization, I was both nervous and excited to take over the reins. They were certainly big shoes to fill, but being the lead coordinator for the fellowship this year has given me the opportunity to grow my facilitation skills and increase my confidence. 

During the fall semester, we focused on skill building necessary for student organizing. We met once a week as a group to learn and discuss topics ranging from navigating college bureaucracy and leveraging student power, to using social media for social change, to building anti-oppressive leadership skills. We kicked off the semester with a teach-in about the connection between Petrochemicals, Plastic, and Zero Waste, and then students presented their Stories of Self. A story-telling activity, the Story of Self is a tool for identifying your point of intervention as a student organizer and explaining to your peers how your experiences have shaped your identity. Pictured below is Cat Shewchuk (Virginia Tech) sharing about her experiences participating in direct actions against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. We soon found out that Ryan Kirkpatrick (WVSU) was at that same rally in DC!

After Stories of Self, each week focused on a different Beyond Waste Leadership Certification (BWLC) module, which the fellows have been working on completing throughout the semester. 

BWLC is a self-paced, interactive course available through PLAN’s Community Hub for member campuses. One of our fellows, Katelyn Johnston from the University of Louisville, shared her thoughts on BWLC, 

“I really loved the program, I thought it was over really important stuff and some stuff that I had genuinely never heard of before. Stakeholder mapping was completely new to me and learning about my college's power dynamics was super helpful for not only the STOP fellowship but also other endeavors like my major and other clubs on campus. I would definitely recommend this to other students, especially students that want to have leadership positions”.

BWLC has also stepped the fellows through the process of building out a campaign on their campuses, whether that’s the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) campus pledge or a divestment campaign. Each fellow is working on developing their own unique project related to combating the petrochemical industry on their campus and community. 

To name a few: Annabella Kovach at Bethany College is leading a campaign to get recycling in the town of Bethany and has already addressed her town council to try and get legislation passed. Anna Lee Bishop from Berea is working on a BFFP campus pledge, while Kennedy Little from Morehead College is addressing plastic pollution in her college’s iconic lake via an art exhibition. 

While we don’t focus on event planning and in-person programming until the spring, Ryan (WVSU) has already helped co-host a panel with survivors of the Bhopal India disaster and Catherine Galla (Ohio University, Athens) has hosted button making workshops for her Fracking Awareness Campaign, pictured below. 

We’re also so proud of Katelyn, who was featured on a local Louisville radio station on their Sustainability Now! Program. She talked about STOP and her non-profit Clean4Change that she runs with 2023-2024 STOP fellow Shayla Roberts-Long!

We wrapped up the semester hosting Lee Franklin from EarthDay.org (EDO) who spoke to us about ways STOP fellows can partner with EDO for Earth Day 2025 around the theme “Our Power, Our Planet”. I’m already looking forward to the next semester of the fellowship and seeing how the fellows spring into action.

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