Category: Q&A

Plymouth State student recognized for civic service

Alyssa Griffin of Londonderry is a second-year student at Plymouth State University, where she’s studying meteorology. She was recently honored with Campus Compact for New Hampshire’s Presidents’ Leadership Award and a spot in the Newman Civic Fellowship for her service work on campus and in the community.

What is the Student Support Foundation, and what has your involvement been?

The Student Support Foundation … awards emergency financial grants to students in need, and we manage an on-campus food pantry, as well as some other satellite miniature pantries across campus. In the fall semester I was elected food pantry manager. … I noticed that the food pantry didn’t really have any type of inventory system or donation system … so I created an inventory tracking system on Google Sheets … which was highly successful. We continued that system this semester, and I’m hoping we can continue it going forward. … This semester, our previous president didn’t return, and in our first meeting I was elected SSF president. I was kind of sad in a way because I loved my food pantry manager position, but I was also happy for all these new opportunities and connections that I can make as president.

How does the pantry inventory system work, and why was it needed?

We didn’t really know what was moving in and out of the pantry or what the items that students really needed were. If people reached out to us about organizing a food drive and asked us, ‘What do you guys need?’ we would have to physically go into the space and look and figure that out. … [With the new system] we do inventory once a month, and every time we get donations, we log those, so we’re very easily able to [assess the need] every month. … For example, if we were getting a lot of donations of chicken noodle soup and the inventory of chicken noodle soup was continuously going down, [that indicated that] chicken noodle soup was a hot, popular item, so we’d ask for donations of chicken noodle soup. Similarly, on the opposite side, if we were getting a lot of donations of toothbrushes and the toothbrush inventory kept going up, we [knew we] didn’t have to ask for toothbrushes for our next drive.

What have you and SSF accomplished during your time as SSF president?

[We accomplished] opening a couple of those satellite miniature pantries across campus, as well as organizing a partnership with Hannaford in Plymouth, New Hampshire. [Hannaford] donated over 100 boxes of pasta, bags of rice and canned products to us, and they featured us as their charity for a couple months.

What does the Newman Civic Fellowship entail?

The purpose is to connect me with other students and like-minded individuals across the nation — I think there are over 200 other colleges and universities [involved with the program] — who are doing amazing things on their campuses, to kind of inspire us and give us a support system and network to continue our work. There are going to be workshops on leadership and entrepreneurship, connecting us with professionals in different disciplines who are working with social justice issues, environmental issues, food insecurity, all of that stuff. They hold a big conference for all of us in the spring in Boston … where we’ll get to meet all these people and do some workshops and just get inspired by other people’s energies and aspirations.

What about the fellowship are you looking forward to most?

I’m definitely very excited to branch out. Being a STEM major, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to take a lot of classes in the social sciences, so [with the fellowship] I’ll be able to get involved in that way and also meet students who are a little more knowledgeable about some of the social injustices and things that are happening in the world. I have a feeling it’s really going to open my eyes to the struggles that other students are facing across the campus and the unique ways that [my] peers are tackling these issues.

How would you like to continue serving the campus over the next two years?

We want to make sure that we’re reaching the students who need our help … [with] whatever issue they’re facing right now, whether it’s a financial hardship or not being able to have a meal for the evening, so my goal is to make sure that our services are widespread and very easily accessible. … [Plymouth State] serves a lot of first-generation college students and low-income students and minorities in that aspect, so I’d love to talk to students who are comfortable talking about those challenges to see what else SSF can do to better support them.

How would you like to serve the wider community after you graduate?

In whatever line of work I end up in, whether it’s research or being a forecaster or a consultant or something completely different, I hope that I can find ways to continue to connect with the public. … I am extremely interested in educating the public on climate change and the science [behind it] and … making sure people have the tools and the knowledge at their disposal … to understand and prepare for it.

Featured photo: Alyssa Griffin

NH cemetery introduces a new kind of burial

Mel Bennett is the creator of Life Forest, a recently opened conservation cemetery in Hillsborough that provides burial plots for cremated remains, marked by memorial trees planted and maintained by staff tree experts.

What led you to create Life Forest?

My mom died [after] a long illness … and I had her cremains in my cabinet, like many people do. … I started reading about these burial pods where you could put cremains in a biodegradable container and plant a tree. … I loved the idea, but when I started doing more research I couldn’t find any cemeteries or places that would protect this tree. I felt like the responsibility of taking care of this tree was epic. What if I go on vacation? I’m going to have to hire someone to water my mom’s tree. What do I do if I want to move? … That’s when I started thinking, ‘I think people would want something like this.’

Is this a new idea?

We’re the first ones to do this anywhere. We’re the only legal cemetery that plants a tree above the cremains and legally protects both the tree and the legacy of the person. … This is a big shift in the death care industry. There’s always been this divide between traditional burial and green burial, but there are wonderful aspects of both, and we want to try to bridge that gap. We want to maintain the legal protection of legacy and ancestry and cemetery [land] that’s [associated with] traditional burial and incorporate the idea of environmental protection that’s [associated with] green burial.

How are the plots protected?

Headstones are protected under cemetery law. As we worked with our legal team, we realized that if we use a tree as a headstone, it’s a respected entity. It’s legally protected, meaning that nobody can ever cut it down or cut the branches, as long as it’s in a legal cemetery. … We also want to protect the legacy of the people who are buried there, so we record their vital statistics — full name, birth date and death date and latitude-longitude location of where they’re buried on the property — in the deed of the land. That’s really important, because that ensures that people will know where their loved ones are in future generations.

What’s the science behind this?

There’s a misconception being sold out there that cremains actually help plants grow, and that’s not true. … We’ve worked with quite a few environmental scientists to make sure that we’re doing this correctly … and in a way that’s not going to be detrimental to the tree. … You have to make sure there’s a buffer of at least 18 inches between the root ball of the tree and the cremains, and that you use a rich compost. After three years, the salty nature of the cremains will dissipate.

How are the plots marked?

We have a QR code placed at the base of the tree … and we help families create [virtual] memorial pages … with memories, pictures and video clips of their loved one. Then, you can scan that QR code, and it’ll bring up [the memorial page]. This gives people the opportunity to share an immense amount of personal things, ideas and representations of their loved one in the way that they would want to be remembered, without taking up a ton of space.

What kind of comfort does a memorial tree give people who have lost a loved one?

Instead of having a commemorative piece of granite that never changes, you have this tree that grows and changes and takes different forms every season. You can see its leaves and its flowers, and it’s a way of connecting with your loved one through a different type of life.

What’s the environmental benefit?

Instead of having these huge concrete vaults that are really not great for the environment, you’re planting a tree that is going to grow and give off quality air, and you’re creating a space with a more vivid [landscape].

What are your future plans for Life Forest?

We’re going to be working toward [forming] collaborations with conservation entities in order to expand our locations and availability to be accessible to more people, and so that people don’t have to travel too far to visit their loved ones.

Featured photo: Mel Bennett. Photo by Millyard Studios.