Author: Lexus Yamashiro

Alex Lum describes himself as a “perpetual sophomore” attending KCC. The 42-year-old is pursuing his studies in Pre-Engineering and serves as a temporary representative for the Na Hua o Papa Club. Lum said Na Hua o Papa works to promote sustainability efforts, specifically ecological implementations onto the campus.

“Everyone has their own kind of green space culturally in the back of their minds and that’s kind of what we want to see,” Lum said. “With the loss of a lot of native ecologies, native plantscapes, we don’t have enough people with that in their mind so we have to recreate the native ecology of KCC as much as possible.”

Lum said the club recently harvested some sweet potato, a plant he said is pest resistant making it unharmful to the environment it is placed in.

In the future, Lum hopes that the campus’ only rain garden will advance to divert roof water from going into storm drains into a freshwater lens that he said should become drinkable within 50 years.