Hello! My name is Luke — I’m a contributor for Novel Hand and a sophomore at Princeton planning to major in molecular biology and minor in Chinese. My interest in biology is very broad and very much intertwined with my interest in sustainability. Eventually I hope I can do molecular biology research that helps address climate change: for example, engineering bacteria to produce biofuels, or plants to photosynthesize in a way that captures more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
At the same time, I don’t believe the environmental crisis can be resolved with technology and research alone. For most of my life this has lead to me focusing on changing my own lifestyle: eating vegan, bike commuting, and not flying when I can take a Greyhound instead. More recently I’ve been thinking about both bottom up and top down solutions: individual actions like the ones I try to take that, when multiplied across thousands of people, can have a large collective impact, as well as overarching climate policies that put the onus where it really belongs — on corporations and governments. For that reason, I’m interested in policy proposals like carbon taxes and broad resolutions like the Green New Deal, and also movements like fossil fuel divestment, which I’m involved with at Princeton.
Other campus activities that I participate in include eating homemade hot pot every week, running voter registration drives through the Asian American Student Association, and taking crisis line phone calls. The recent escalation of campus culture wars has also fully consumed me, which is often detrimental to my sleep schedule — but it feels good to be educated about racism and other ubiquitous structures of oppression. When I’m back home in Minnesota, I volunteer with Bunny Besties, a nonprofit that takes professionally trained therapy rabbits to visit folks in libraries, nursing homes, homeless shelters, and other locations throughout the Twin Cities.
Circling back to Chinese for a moment — my mom is Taiwanese, and that’s where my drive to learn Mandarin comes from. After graduating from high school, I had the privilege of spending nine months in China doing just that while also volunteering at an NGO dedicated to educating farmers about agricultural chemical management. (I also worked in a local barber shop, haha.)
While in China, I started paying attention to human rights abuses by the Chinese government, especially the ones occurring in Xinjiang province right now. I spent two weeks in Xinjiang in May 2019, which was a really striking experience, and I’m starting to work as an editor for a project that collects testimonials submitted by victims and their families.
I think that’s a pretty comprehensive overview! My goal in writing for Novel Hand is to continue exploring all of the topics touched on above, to really hone in on the actions that each of us can take to effect change in the world, and to engage with a community of similarly motivated people. If you would ever like to talk about or debate anything with me, please feel free to email me at lbunday@princeton.edu!
- Charting the Course of the Green New Deal - October 20, 2020
- What We Can Learn from the Search Engine that Plants Trees - August 25, 2020
- Meet Luke - August 6, 2020
WOHOOOOOO!!!! GO LUKE!!!