Students from Northwestern’s Brady Scholars Program in Ethics and Civic Life hosted a town hall debate at the John Evans Alumni Center on Monday to debate the Evanston waste transfer station operated by Veolia.
This year’s Brady Scholars senior class selected town-gown relations as the focus of their class study, with Monday’s debate serving as the capstone of their conversations with the community. The class has been working all year with the advocacy group Evanston Neighbors United, which was organized last year to address the Veolia issue specifically. The waste management company has elicited community outcry for aggregating waste near the residential neighborhood in which it operates.
About 40 students and community members attended the discussion, which was headlined by a presentation from Tanya Noble, a member of ENU. Noble said she was first drawn to the issue after hearing complaints from those who live near the station. Noble talked about the history of the Veolia station in Evanston and focused on the permits the company has that have made it difficult to remove.
“This (waste management station) has got to go because this makes an entire segment of our city unlivable,” she said. “People started asking me, ‘Why do we have this dump in the middle of the neighborhood?'”
The Brady Scholars then discussed their own experience working with ENU to attempt to solve the Veolia issue. Brady Scholar Peter Skopec said the discussion aimed to educate NU students about the impact the University has on the city by using Veolia as well, even though the waste transfer station does not immediately affect the campus experience because it’s far away.
“The problem is that we feel like we’re not involved in it, which we clearly are,” the Weinberg senior said. “We’re part of the problem, and we have a responsibility to solve it.”
Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl also attended the discussion. Tisdahl addressed Evanston on March 16, endorsing Lakeshore Waste Services to operate a waste transfer station in Morton Grove that would provide a nearby alternative to users of the Veolia station. She did not speak as part of the debate.
Each class of Brady Scholars selects an issue to confront and then narrows it down to a target area of concern by their senior year. This year’s class chose the specific town-gown issue of Veolia because NU also uses the company for its waste management. Skopec said the bad state of town-gown relations three years ago drew students to the issue.
“When we were deciding what our project was going to be, it was going around the Internet how terrible Northwestern students were, that they were drinking and destroying the neighborhoods,” he said. “This was something that we wanted to address because it involves both our Northwestern community and the Evanston community.”
Gregory Mitchell, who works as a graduate fellow with the Brady Scholars, said the NU community should be aware of how it influences all parts of Evanston.
“There’s a huge part of the town that our students never see, that our faculty don’t necessarily go to, that we’re completely unaware of, and yet our actions have consequences for that community,” he said.
The Brady Scholars invited the leaders of a number of student groups to attend the discussion. Noble said the class hopes to broaden student support for their mission before the University’s waste management contract expires at the end of April.
