Inside Parents Hall, Drake University students in hoodies sat across from elected officials and environmental experts in stiff suits.
On Feb. 17, these varied groups came together with a singular, urgent issue in mind: Iowa’s water quality.
The event, titled “What About Our Water?” was an evening of advocacy and networking hosted by the Office of Sustainability.
Sustainability Coordinator Sydney Dvorak addressed purple, orange and green color-coded tables of community members, standing in front of a projected map with the key. At purple tables sat experts; at orange, sat representatives; and green, sat those leading letter writing — with students scattered throughout.
Dvorak thanked attendees for coming and invited students to bounce around the tables, have conversations and learn.
“Everyone is from a different area, different expertise, so they all know different things,” Dvorak said to the group. “If someone can’t answer your question, they might be able to direct you to someone else.”
In her introduction to the event, Dvorak directed attendees to the green tables, where they could write letters to legislators about water-quality-specific policy.
As the voter and civic engagement peer for the Community Engaged Learning Office, Chloe Lepak collaborated with the Office of Sustainability to host the letter-writing table. Her focus was to enable people to not only digest new information, but also do something with that information, Lepak said.
While her role focuses on the legislative side of things, in the two years she’s held the position, Lepak said she’s had a lot of opportunities to work with environmental advocates because “they tend to be really passionate about writing letters to legislators.”
For Dvorak, the event was the only logical response to a summer defined by a county-wide water study and a month-long lawn-watering ban.
“I talked to a lot of students who were like, ‘What’s even going on? We don’t understand,” Dvorak said. “I wanted to host this event where we could figure out what’s going on and what are we doing about it … That’s why I brought these experts and representatives to talk to you.”
Lepak commended Dvorak’s personal approach to the event. That conversational structure helped make “a very abstract macro concept” like fixing water quality feel more accessible and “not completely hopeless.”
“One of the things that we’re definitely missing [at Drake] are more like conversation-style events,” Lepak said. “Some people know what nitrates are and some people don’t … being able to have the open table system allows everybody’s learning levels to get what they want out of it.”
Sophomore student Sophia Reeves attended the event as a member of Drake’s Environmental Action League. It was her first time at an active roundtable event like “What About Our Water?”
“This has been a very unique experience for me to be able to talk with people about what they care about, what they know about, what they’re doing research about,” Reeves said.
Reeves’s conversations touched on cancers in water, concerns with generative AI using Des Moines water for system use and maintenance and access to filtration systems, she said.
“It’s just important that as we’re a part of this community, we’re trying to take care of it as well and make sure that everyone has access to stuff that they need,” Reeves said.
Communities need students who care like Reeves, said Cody Smith, the director of climate initiatives at the Iowa Environmental Council. Smith sat at one of the environmental expert tables and spoke with students throughout the event.
In a conversation with students about turning environmental data into real-world change, Smith said the personal element is crucial.
“The science is here; we can figure that out. The policy solutions, we can figure that out,” Smith said. “But the stories are the only things that are going to actually make this happen.”
