This piece originally appeared on Waging Nonviolence

As pandemic restrictions fade, students are finding innovative ways to end higher ed’s many ties to the fossil fuel industry.

From late November through early March of this year, visitors to the University of Washington Career Center in Seattle would have found students sitting in a circle on the floor, some doing homework on laptops as they participated in one of the longest-running recent climate protests at the school. Their goal: to convince the UW administration to establish a policy banning fossil fuel companies from coming to campus to recruit students to work for them.

“We’re trying to dismantle the fossil fuel industry’s presence at UW and their hold on the larger American public,” said Brett Anton of Institutional Climate Action, or ICA, the Washington state-based student group that organized the sit-in. For weeks, as many as 30 students at a time participated in the protest, which initially took place throughout the Career Center’s open hours before transitioning to a shorter window of time every afternoon. For some participants, balancing climate activism with school responsibilities presented real challenges.

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Photo credit: University of California-San Diego Green New Deal