Biography | Michael Brune — Dual Degrees Taken Behind This Arch at West Chester

The degrees were not in ecology. They were in economics and finance.

In May 1993 Brune sat in John A. Farrell Stadium, on the university's south campus, and took dual bachelor of science diplomas from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.

He later told the class of 2012, when he returned as Sierra Club executive director, that he had sat in those same stands in May 1993.

A 2009 magazine profile dates the graduation to 1992. The commencement speech report and the Sierra Club biography both say 1993. The later date is the one that holds.

The Old Main arch on the historic quad is what a visitor can still touch. The 1871 classroom-and-dormitory block came down; the stone entrance was rebuilt here in 1997 as a memorial gateway onto the quadrangle.

After the ceremony he did not go into a bank. He put a résumé in at Greenpeace's Philadelphia office, then spent the rest of the 1990s at Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco.

In 1999, while he was on that staff, RAN's campaign pushed Home Depot to drop old-growth wood. Time magazine called it the year's leading environmental story.

The arch is not the stadium. It is the campus that put the two degrees on paper, a short walk from High Street in West Chester.

Photo: Smallbones, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons