Student disciplined over recycling video
A student at Brock University is on disciplinary probation and in danger of losing his job as a residence don because of his efforts to promote recycling.
Travis Lewis, a second-year political science student, put on rubber gloves and a face mask and hopped into the garbage dumpsters that serve his residence.
He posted a fast- motion video to YouTube documenting the amount of recyclable material that is ending up in local landfills because most of the 900 students who live in Brock’s Village Residence don’t have easy access to recycling containers.
“There are three locations where garbage is collected, but only one place for recycling,” Lewis said, showing where the bins are located.
“The garbage bins are closer than the recycling bins,” so many students take the easy way out and toss everything in the garbage, he said.
The result is much more garbage is going to the landfill than necessary, the 19-year-old said.
Lewis said the 75 students who live in the court for which he is assigned responsibility told him in September they want to be able to sort out their recycling and compost.
“My students were complaining how much of a distance it is to recycle,” he said.
He took their request to officials at Brock’s department of residence life. University officials told him organic collection is not possible because it would attract animals, he said, but agreed with him that easy access to recycling bins would improve recycling on campus — especially in the Village, where students do their own grocery shopping and cooking.
In January, Brock acquired 12 pairs of large, wheeled recycling bins ( blue for containers, grey for paper) for the Village’s 12 courts. But since then, they have sat unused in a large clump behind a garbage compound.
Two of the bins are being used in Lewis’s court, and he personally wheels them down to the pick- up area two or three times a week.
Lewis said he was told the 22 others aren’t being distributed because Brock is waiting for chains and locks to secure them and is waiting for the snow to melt.
As classes ended and Lewis realized the term was coming to an end, he decided to try to make sure the issue doesn’t die.
He is leaving campus to study abroad next year, and wanted to ensure people are aware of the need to recycle. Earlier this month, he made the video and posted it online. So far, the video has 516 views. But Lewis is in trouble. Last week, he was summoned to a meeting with two managers and was told they are “pissed off” and “livid” about the video.
They told him the T-shirt neckline that is briefly visible in the video is an official shirt, and that the video amounts to “insubordination.”
In a 20-minute recording Lewis made of the disciplinary meeting, he is told he should be patient because the department of residences is short-staffed and “overstressed.” He is told he is being “selfish” by not being patient.
Lewis said he did not make the video to antagonize anyone. No one is named in his video or in the accompanying description.
“It’s just really frustrating,” he said. “The bins are there and we’ve got people (the 11 other dons) willing to take the bins out and now they are saying they are waiting for the snow to melt. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Lewis said he made the video because going through official channels wasn’t working.
“I am always going to do what I believe in, I am not going to be a bystander,” he said. “I am just trying to make an impact here that will follow these students.
“It’s not just me that wants this, it’s the residents who say they want it.”
Lewis, who grew up in Oshawa, said university residence is the first time most people live away from home “and they are learning to be adults here. For 900 students not to recycle and then go live off-campus, that will have a hefty chain effect.”
The two Brock department of residences staff who disciplined Lewis did not respond to phone calls.
Director of residences Jamie Fleming, the most senior person in the department, responded by e- mail and said Lewis was disciplined for his dangerous dumpster behaviour.
“We want our residence dons to be role models and to lead by example,” Fleming said in the e-mail. “We do not want students to put themselves in unsafe situations. Obviously, we didn’t think it was appropriate for Travis to climb into a garbage dumpster.”
Brock spokesman Jeffrey Sinibaldi said university officials will not comment on a personnel matter.
Lewis said he hopes he doesn’t lose his job, because that means he would be evicted “and I would have to go live with a buddy until the term ends.
“I like being a don and I would like to finish on a strong note with my students,” he said. “But I will stand up for what I believe in.”