Our theme is the development of an ecologically observant, sustainable, creative, participatory ethic of community living. We pursue this path through exploration of our relationships with one another, and our relationships with the Earth. In this sense, we are challenging ourselves to develop as activists, applying our education to our concern for the community.
To our residents, the Earth House represents a supportive, empowering, honest, cooperative community that promotes participation and self-awareness.
To the community, the Earth House is a source of socially and temporally relevant, informative, engaging acts of public spectacle and participation. All of our workshops embody our commitment to critical learning through participatory experience, so house activities combine multiple medias and numerous points of intersection with the education, politics, and experience of the student.
In these ways, the Earth House represents the organized implementation of a liberal arts perspective. A liberal arts education exists to illuminate, through diversity of ideas and hands-on experience, the intersections between disciplines and discourses.
Earth House demonstrates the relationships between seemingly disparate events, consequences, and communities, by providing programs that focus on environmental concerns or consumer attitudes that effect numerous and transnational communities. In this way, it helps to locate Drew University within a matrix of global knowledge, and advances a holistic understanding of the individual that leads to feelings of autonomy, responsibility, and opportunity. We propose to fill both academic and wellness needs for students at Drew.
Our implementation of this agenda occurs through not only the numerous and varied events that each member of the Earth House hosts, but also through the participation of Earth House members in numerous other organizations on campus. Frequent internal consciousness-raising sessions keep house members motivated and informed.