Pepperdine Boycotted Hyundai

Universities in competition share beliefs on Hyundai Challenge

Pepperdine’s slow ride throughout the Hyundai Challenge was due in part to the student body’s perception that the Hyundai Challenge wasn’t what it was supposed to be—sustainable. 

During the Hyundai Challenge in Nov. 2019, Pepperdine fell flat and remained in third place for the majority of the competition while Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount University  battled it out to come out on top. 

Many Pepperdine students were conflicted about participating in the challenge because of Hyundai’s requirements to use their provided plastic water bottles.

“As a school we fell behind in participants despite students understanding the campaign,” Pepperdine junior Scottie Sandlin said. “Because students did not want to sign up to support a campaign that was not being completely transparent in regards to their sustainable initiatives.” 

Sandlin is the Vice President of the Pepperdine GreenTeam, the school’s sustainability and climate club.

The GreenTeam’s goal is to spur students to participate in environmental action.

When Pepperdine was invited to participate in the Hyundai Challenge, Sandlin and the GreenTeam President Petra Sikorski were cast as leading roles in the implementation of the Hyundai Challenge at Pepperdine. 

The way students viewed the challenge at Pepperdine is very similar to how some Santa Clara students viewed it. 

Near the end of the challenge, several students at Santa Clara began to question and speak out against the nature of the Hyundai Challenge. 

Junior Liam Swanson is member of Enviornmental Action (ENACT), a group of students centered around enviornmental action.

Swanson was one of the students questioning the challenge.

“I heard it was the Hyundai Sustainability Challenge and for me that was instantly an ironic thing that Hyundai would be putting a sustainability challenge on our campus,” Swanson said. “So I was a little thrown off and questioned the motives from the start.” 

But beyond how students felt about sustainability in the challenge, Sandlin identified organizational and communication issues as reasons for Pepperdine’s rough start. 

Sandlin was notified only a few weeks in advance of the Hyundai Challenge’s start date that Pepperdine was going to be involved, and she and Sikorski were tasked with getting students involved. 

Prior to this, Pepperdine Athletics was aware of the challenge for a few months but did not ask for the Pepperdine Center for Sustainability to get involved until a few weeks before the start. 

When the challenge did start, students weren’t fully aware of where they could get their Hyundai Challenge stickers from. 

After discovering this issue, the GreenTeam worked to make students aware of where they could get them. 

“I don’t think people could understand the correlation between GreenTeam, Pepperdine, the car company and [Pepperdine] Athletics,” Sandlin said. “Like you would think the more the merrier, but in this case I don’t know why Athletics was involved.”

At first, Sandlin was a part of the large group of students that viewed the challenge as sustainable and exciting.

But as the challenge continued on, Sandlin investigated it more and was able to see the disconnect between Hyundai, sustainability and the fact that they were contributing to the production of more plastic. 

Pepperdine’s lack of participation in the challenge can be seen as a reflection of the controversial nature of it. Following the conclusion of the Hyundai challenge, Sandlin and the other students have not received a thank you or any other follow-up from Hyundai. 

“If they want to be sustainable, I think a big component of being sustainable is consistency,” Sandlin said. “I don’t think that consistency was shown.” 

Contact Kyle de la Fuente at kdelafuente@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.