March 8, 2022
The Price of Unpaid Activism
By Lisa Herforth-Hebbert
Have advocacy and organizing become careers for the well-educated?
McKenna Dunbar typically starts her day at 5:30 AM. While many of her classmates are still asleep, the University of Richmond junior has begun remote work for her full-time job as a community engagement coordinator at an environmental advocacy organization, the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. By 8:45 AM, she has logged off and is heading to four hours’ worth of back-to-back classes, followed by a quick lunch break. Then she drives to the Sierra Club office in downtown Richmond to work in person until 7:30 PM.
Long days filled with a swarm of activities are normal for the environmental studies and business administration major. As a financially independent student, she has been balancing classes with full-time work since starting college. Dunbar (who uses “she/her” and “they/them” pronouns) belongs to a small cohort of undergraduate students—roughly 10 percent in 2018—who work more than 35 hours a week on top of a standard college course load. Before the pandemic hit and forced universities to operate remotely, she held several part-time jobs, including doing research at the university herbarium lab, working as a bike mechanic, and assisting with communications and marketing tasks for various university departments. While all of these jobs have been rewarding in one way or another, Dunbar’s heart lies in the environmental advocacy space.
