“Women of color are treated badly. They bear the weight of society, are the most marginalized, and are treated just like the earth… and so there is this connection between them,” says Valeria Bridgewater C’19, about her major: Environment and Sustainability.
Bridgewater holds her responsibility to the earth and her identity as a queer Latina woman in high regard, which has influenced all of the activities that she has been involved with during her time on campus, such as MujerstXs and Alpha Delta Theta.
Valeria has also been actively involved with the University’s Outreach programs, such as going to, “Houston after Hurricane Harvey [to] help rebuild a house.” Additionally, she also participated in the Haiti Spring Break Outreach trip, where she had the opportunity to learn Haitian Creole. She believes that this trip was a particularly enlightening experience for her, saying, “It was funny. You have all this expensive gear, like hiking boots and big backpacks, and these people are in sandals doing this every day… I like[d] being outside of my comfort zone.”
Additionally, she has also served in both branches of The GSD Alliance- first as resident of the GSD House (now The Queer & Ally House) during her sophomore year, and then as Co-President of Spectrum her the next.
As Co-President of Spectrum in 2017-18, she played a key role in helping the branch grow, by helping to “[execute] more events and just being more visual about [the group’s] presence.” In reflecting on the LGBTQ+ community during her early days at Sewanee, Bridgewater recalled that, “there wasn’t much of a presence before.” However, since that time she has seen the community “flourish.” “Now there are so many events,” her favorite of which being Gayla, Spectrum’s annual event honoring the passage of the marriage equality act and celebrating activism.
Bridgewater’ wants to incoming students to know that, “You have a community here that will support you and fight to further your rights.” Like many incoming students, Valeria was nervous about coming to Sewanee as an LGBTQ+ identifier, because she, “knew, like, five queer people in ... high school,” and it was, “bigger than this university.” Despite her apprehensions, while here, she found a community and by helping nourish this community, she believes it helped nourished her in return.
Her engagement in Sewanee’s LGBTQ+ community helped her come to terms with her own identity; “When I was younger I told my mom that my friend was bi and had a girlfriend, and my mom was like, ‘That’s not right. You can have one or the other but you can’t have both.’” Her mother has since changed her mind thanks to Bridgwater, but coming into Sewanee she explained that, “I had to unlearn that for myself.. to feel comfortable saying, ‘I am a bi woman.’”
Valeria will be serving as a Program Operations Fellow at the Center for Ecotechnology after she graduates. There, she will be working to improve the relationship between humans and the environment, predominantly through waste reduction. In regard to why she has such a passion for advocating for the environment, Valeria believes that environmental activism intersects with all parts of her identity; “usually environmental justice is [present] within communities of color,” as they face “the most pollution.”Additionally, she feels that, “sustainability is not just [about the] earth, it’s earth, economics, and social equity.”
Thus, “the earth, just like minorities, bears the weight of society.”
