By Catherine Orr
The University of Richmond is taking steps to demonstrate its institutional commitment to environmental awareness, but are the students doing their part to address serious climate and environmental concerns?
For decades, college campuses have been at the center of social change. Student war-protests and civil rights demonstrations were a catalyst for national movements. Now, across the country, college students are rallying to fight what The Washington Post writer Darragh Johnson calls the atomic bomb of today: global warming.
In November, nearly 6,000 college students from across the nation convened in College Park, Md., for Power Shift 2007. Through panel discussions and workshops, students learned new skills and bolstered motivation to become leaders in the environmental movements on their campuses, according to the Power Shift website.
Melanie Martin, a sophomore psychology major, was one of 10 Richmond students to attend Power Shift. "Some schools are doing amazing things, and some don't even have recycling programs," she said.
Richmond falls somewhere in the middle, Martin said.
Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, ranks No. 1 in the Sierra Club's Sierra magazine "10 That Get It" list, which names the top 10 green schools in the country. Like many of the schools leading the pack in environmental awareness, Oberlin has an office dedicated to environmental sustainability, according to the Sierra Club.
In addition, Oberlin has a car-sharing program, purchases more than 30 percent of
the dining hall food from local farmers and employs 10 students called "The College Recycling Assistants." These students work on a variety of resource-use reduction initiatives and administer the college's recycling program, according to information provided by Oberlin.
Richmond has a long way to go to achieve the environmental status of Oberlin, which Sierra magazine calls "a tree hugger's dream." Richmond faces the significant environmental obstacle of being powered by coal, which is not a renewable energy source, sophomore James McCormick said.
Coal-powered institutions are not uncommon in Virginia. Virginia has made non-binding goals to increase the use of renewable energy, but unlike nearly half of the states in the country, it has not passed renewable energy standards, according to an article in USA TODAY by Jordan Schrader.
This statewide trend is prevalent in Virginia colleges. Richmond burns more than 6,500 tons of coal a year, according to an article in The Collegian by Drew Pierson. According to Platts Coal Outlook, the University of Virginia burns 25,000 tons of coal a year and Virginia Polytechnic Institute burns 30,000 tons a year.
Implementing renewable energy is something the Richmond is constantly looking into, President Edward Ayers said in a recent address to students, organized by Richmond's two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and Richmond Environmental Network for Economic Willpower (RENEW). But it would involve a
huge overhaul and there is no plan for that right now, he said.
Although the coal plant does impede Richmond's progress toward becoming a greener campus, the university is significantly responding to the rallying cry for environmental action in other ways, Ayers said. He gave an extensive list of environmentally conscious policies and practices the university has already implemented.
The Heilman Dining Center, for instance, was recognized as a "green restaurant" because of its efforts to reduce waste, Ayers said. Also, Weinstein Hall was among the first four buildings in Virginia to be certified as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (or LEED) building, meaning it complied with certain recommendations for energy efficiency and environmentally safe materials as designated by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), Ayers said.
Among the green features of Weinstein Hall are waterless urinals, paint and carpet that reduce allergic reactions and sensors in each room that detect the amount of carbon monoxide present and adjust the amount of fresh air being pumped in.
Last spring, Richmond's Sierra Club and RENEW contacted Ayers and asked him to sign the Presidential Climate Commitment (PCC) said Jason Levinn, a senior business major and founder of RENEW. The PCC is a commitment that 420 college presidents have signed, requiring the college of the signatory to become climate neutral, which means having net zero green house gas emissions, according to the PCC. Emissions can be offset with other efforts such as tree-planting, constructing LEED certified buildings and educational efforts, according to the PCC.
Ayers told the students he would look into signing the commitment but that he really wanted to see more student support, Levinn said. Members of the Sierra Club and RENEW took the challenge and during Richmond's first Environmental Awareness Week they obtained hundreds of signatures from students, faculty and staff, urging Ayers to sign the commitment, Levinn said.
At the public address organized by the two student groups, Ayers spoke about the student groups' environmental concerns. He lauded their efforts and assured them that the administration was behind them 100 percent.
The small group of students gathered for the speech, composed mainly of members of the student groups, cheered when Ayers announced that he had decided to sign the PCC.
Richmond is one of only three of the 17 schools that make up the Virginia Action Climate Network (VaCAN), to sign the PCC. Ayers' signing the PCC sends a message to schools in Virginia and to other peer and aspirant universities that the Richmond is serious about environmental awareness, Levinn said.
Signing the commitment will only get the university so far, Ayers said. All the institutional actions don't mean much if students don't do their part, he said.
Students are the only members of the university community who live on campus 24-hours a day, Ayers said. Students make a negative difference when they drive across
campus instead of walk, run water unnecessarily or keep power-strips on when they don't need to, he said. "You can wipe out efforts made by LEED certified buildings with individual irresponsibility," he said.
Ayers challenged the students living in the University Forest Apartments to reduce their energy use by half, and said the university would be installing energy meters on dorms so that the same challenge could be issued to those who lived in dorms.
He also challenged the environmental groups to turn their sights on their peers and take on the responsibility of ensuring that proper action is being taken from the ground up.
Sophomore, Cloe Franko, an environmental studies major and member of RENEW, said she was happy to accept that challenge. "Now that we have the ball rolling with the PCC being signed, it's our big goal to really uphold our end and make the students more aware," she said.
Students' lack of awareness and action is a common complaint among Richmond environmental enthusiasts. It's not that the students are against the environment, Martin said, it's that they are apathetic. When members of RENEW went around to classes to ask students to support the PCC, "No one said, €˜I hate the environment,'" Martin said, "but that doesn't necessarily mean they're doing anything to help."
Aimee Janesky, a senior who is not affiliated with either RENEW or the Sierra Club, said most students are not particularly environmentally cautious. "Honestly, I don't see a huge amount of students participating mainly because I don't know if people really know what they can do," she said.
RENEW is trying to address this issue by educating students about proper recycling and conserving energy, Franko said. Franko wrote an opinion article for The Collegian instructing students to remove bottle caps before recycling, print on both sides of the paper and turn off power strips and unplug appliances when they are not in use.
In her article, Franko also encouraged students to not "hesitate to be that person at an apartment who gathers the empty beer cans and puts them in recycling or who reaches in the garbage can for a plastic water bottle and drops it in the recycling."
It is that kind of action that the general student population is lacking, said James McCormick, a sophomore and political science major. Apathy is the largest obstacle in increasing Richmond students' action toward conservation, sustainability and recycling, he said.
"Students don't really feel that their actions could have an effect," McCormick said. "They feel that, no matter what they do it will really just be the administration that decides everything in the end."
Students have an attitude that one person can't make a difference in saving the environment, said Kimberly Holzinger, a senior who attended the president's address to support her roommate.
In an effort to show students how individual action, or inaction, can add up, the Sierra Club and University Facilities worked together to conduct a waste audit in
March, 2006, according to an article in The Collegian by Austin McPherson.
Through the audit they found that more than 75 percent of the contents of trash bins and dumpsters were recyclable products, according to the article.
That same year, Richmond participated in RecycleMania for the first time. RecycleMania is a nation-wide 10-week recycling competition that pits colleges against each other to determine which university recycles the most, according to McPherson's article. The competition is broken down into three categories: most recycled, least trash and highest recycling rate.
After two weeks of the competition, the Richmond was ranked 40th out of 42 schools, according to the article.
Getting students to recycle has always been a challenge, Stephen Bisese, vice president for Student Development said.
Joseph Boehman, dean of Richmond College, would like to see Richmond students improve their recycling habits, he said. At the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where Boehman worked previously, the environmental efforts of the students were significant, he said.
Students would participate in "Green Games," and "Water Wars," campus-wide competitions measuring which dorms were recycling and conserving water more, he said. "The students got really into it," he said.
At Richmond, Boehman said, recycling receptacles are not well marked and they don't saturate the campus the way they should. "Students drive the bus on making
those changes happen," he said.
Bisese said that students could be challenged more to prove that they were environmentally aware. "What it boils down to is student involvement isn't enough yet," he said.
It's going to take a concerted effort from the environmental groups and the administration to increase the environmental involvement of the students, Martin said.
Environmentally responsible actions need to be a conscious effort before they can be habit, she said. "You have to bombard people with it so it hopefully becomes a habit," she said. "You can't make them care, but you can give them strategies and tools to do something."
RENEW is working on a proposal to incorporate environmental awareness in freshmen orientation, Levinn said. Emphasizing environmentally friendly practices from day one could have a positive influence on the student involvement in recycling and conservation, he said.
Increasing the presence of environmental awareness in the classroom is another way to reach the students, Martin said. Martin, who grew up in the rural community of New Kent, Va., where she spent a lot of time outside, always appreciated the environment, but didn't have a real concept of the damage people can do, she said.
That is, until she took a marine biology class at Richmond. Through field trips and research, Martin learned, first hand, the effects of global warming on the ecosystem, she said.
That kind of education is powerful, Martin said. If service learning and practical application were a more present part of academic requirements, it would force students to be exposed to real-world issues, which might inspire change and at the very least would educate students about the problems that exist, she said.
Outside of the classroom, changing students' attitudes might take some positive peer pressure, Martin said. Boehman said that peer pressure could be an important vehicle for change. "People who care, need to make their peers aware," he said, "We need to give them a platform to be a little more vocal."
The current popular culture trend of environmental awareness being "cool," could have a positive effect on the actions of Richmond students, Boehman said. This generation is very conscious of social trends, he said. "It's hip to recycle. It's hip to own a Prius," he said. "If we can make recycling as cool as Ugg boots, people will do it."
Social responsibility being initiated by what's "cool" may seem superficial, "but if it works, it works," Martin said. "It has to start with the image and then it trickles down, hopefully changing the culture as it does."
Bisese is optimistic that students' general apathy toward environmental awareness will change and that they will make the leap to taking action. "Richmond students are responsible about responding to important issues," he said citing an example of students successfully rallying to get healthier food in the dining hall. "When there is a need, they rise up in a smart way," he said.
Richmond has not had an activist in the campus in the past, Levinn said. But it depends on how you define activism, he said. "I think a lot of people view [activism] as rioting in the streets, but that's not always what activism is," he said. "Students here are really smart, and if they see an issue that matters to them, then they can rally around it."
And this may be the perfect time to rally, Boehman said. There is a definite feeling of change at Richmond right now, and with it a palpable energy and excitement, he said.
The institution has shown that it is committed to making environmental awareness a principal issue. Students have the advantage of a new president who is open to their ideas and concerns, he said.
"This is the time to strike," Boehman said.