Alaska Bound: Area college students to visit the Arctic national Widlife Refuse

Printed April 28, 2005

BY STEVE KUCHERA
NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

It will be a trip with a purpose.

Eight students from Ashland's Northland College leave Tuesday to drive to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to learn how drilling for oil could affect the refuge and its denizens.

They'll return May 25 with videos, pictures, journals, music, art and poetry taken or created along the way. The students will share their observations and creations with others to show what the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is and whether it should be protected from drilling.

The Arctic National Wildlife Student Initiative Project is the students' own creation.

"I'm always excited when students figure out what it is they want to learn and how they want to learn it," said peace, conflict and global studies professor Joy Meeker. "I find that kind of education, directly connecting students' passions, is one of the best kind of learning experience they can have."

The trip is an independent project by students majoring in art, biology, environmental studies, veterinary medicine, peace, ethics and global studies.

The students came up with the idea March 16 after the U.S. Senate initiated a budget measure to open ANWR to drilling.

"We decided that day we were going to Alaska," said Northland sophomore Charles Kearns of La Crescent, Minn., who majors in environmental studies. "We had just over a month to try to pull all this together."

And just a month to raise money to pay for the project. The students sold plasma, calendars they made and patches. They had auctions, concerts, people playing drums in the streets and bake sales.

"We've done everything," said Leah Olm, a sophomore from Duluth majoring in peace, ethics and global studies. "It's been a ridiculously motivated and creative campaign."

Olm realizes that it seems hypocritical to drive two vehicles to Alaska and back when the main issue is finding alternatives to drilling for oil. But airfare is too expensive and train travel nonexistent.

The students will go first to the Alaskan cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks. They plan to talk to environmentalists, scientists, natural resource managers and university students.

"We are also going to spend some time in the refuge, doing some camping, witnessing the area through art, music, photography, video documentation," Olm said.

She believes that even now, it's not too late to stop potential drilling in the ANWR.

"One of the really interesting aspects of this whole issue is that there are a lot of oil companies not really interested in drilling because of the small amount of oil," Olm said. "We are curious why the government is pressing this issue."

In 2000, the U.S. Energy Information Administration released a study examining how much recoverable oil ANWR may hold. The report contained a range of estimates, with an average of 10.3 billion barrels.

That amount would supply America's entire appetite for oil for just 15 months, at the 2003 Energy Information Administration listed rate of consumption of 20.5 million barrels a day.

And it will take seven to 10 years for America to begin producing oil on ANWR after leases are issued, the report said.