This is a photo of my roommate in front of a fence (and no trespassing sign) that has recently been put up to close off a path from our apartment to the Sarah Lawrence campus. Of course this new fence is not the end of the world since we can just go around and take the actual road; it adds maybe five minutes to the walk. But it made me think about the ways that we use/value space and land. A lot of Sarah Lawrence students used that path, people in the surrounding buildings also used it to walk their dogs, etc. Even though it was not technically public land, that is how it was used. But I guess whatever company it belongs to decided they were no longer okay with that. The idea that land can just be closed off like that bothers me – why take away access to something that the community is benefitting from when you could just not?
by Leia Pfeffer ’23, for the class Care Work and Climate Adaptation (Spring 2023)