Jaceil Britton ’25 examined how water contamination disproportionately affects Black and brown communities in the South.
Jaceil Britton ’25 started her Community and Multicultural Development (CaMD) Scholar presentation on January 19 by mentioning how refreshing the water outside the venue was. She then went on to cover the contamination of drinking water among Black and brown communities during her presentation, entitled “There’s Something in the Water: The Narrative of Environmental Racism in the Depressed South.”
Britton recalled how she first became interested in researching for her project, explaining her ties to the issue of water contamination. Throughout her research process, Britton examined personal stories emerging from case studies and family members and studied environmental racism through various lenses.
“My interest came from where I grew up. It was one of my case studies, and it was a commonality of where I’ve lived. I [was] curious about it and other people’s experience in the South… I looked specifically at adverse health effects, social and behavioral effects, and economic effects,” said Britton.
Chloe Park ’27, who attended the presentation, noted how the presentation opened her eyes to how such ideal conditions are not available all over the country. Park also mentioned how, through attending Andover, she has been exposed to many different sustainability practices and climate justice initiatives.
“I’ve never thought about environmental racism, because I live in a more suburban area. I’m from Long Island, so this gave a more clear picture of the carcinogens that are taking place right now in different areas of the world. I’m super blessed to be in a place like Andover where not a lot of people take the time to think about the environment because we are surrounded by such great air and such great people who take the time to clean up after themselves, but she reminded me of the importance of that,” said Park.
Another attendee, Lucien-Sinclair Herndon ’28, talked about how the presentation was informative and shed light on the small communities in the South that were struggling. He specifically shared his appreciation for the presentation’s aspects of audience engagement.
“My favorite part was probably how interactive [the presentation] was. [Britton] had peer talks, so you would talk with someone like your neighbor, and then she also had videos she included, but then my favorite part was definitely the questions where she just got to answer [about] her process throughout the whole thing,” said Herndon.
David Gardner, Instructor in English and Britton’s academic advisor, commented on how Britton was able to pull together complex topics and weave them into her presentation with dedication and effort. He expressed his pride in her handling of the Q&A session, noting the challenge of answering questions on the spot.
“It was clear Jaceil put a lot of time and thought and research into putting together both the paper and the presentation. It was very well organized and easy to follow, even as she was unpacking some complex ideas… I was really proud of Jaceil’s Q&A section, she was very good at taking in questions that can always be surprising, you don’t always know what’s going to come. She was really thoughtful in her responses,” said Gardner.
Reflecting on the challenges in her research process, Britton shared how she overcame emotional struggles with the realities she discovered. She described how she would push through during difficult times with her research.
“It’s a very sad topic, and I would get discouraged because not a lot of the things I was finding were happy… I was upset about what I was learning so there were times when I didn’t feel like continuing to expose myself to that, but I would just kind of think about all the people I could help with it and how much of this information I could share with Andover,” said Britton.
Aquita Winslow, Dean of CaMD and one of Britton’s faculty advisors for her presentation, recommended that students follow Britton’s lead and research topics that interest them, since those ideas could easily become the basis for the next scholar presentation. She urged students to push the Andover community to learn more about topics that matter.
“One of the things that Jaceil said at the end of her presentation on Sunday was that doing this research changed her as a person. Because that’s what research does, right? The more research you do, the more you learn about topics… So I encourage students to push themselves. If there’s ever been something you’ve just had an inkling about, research it. If you think that it’s something that this community should learn about, should be talking about, put in [scholar] presentation. Push us as a community to learn about things that we should be talking about and thinking about,” said Winslow.
Editor’s Note: Jaceil Britton ’25 is an Outreach Manager for The Phillipian.
