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College Comment
Towards a Greener Shade of Blue
Summer
2001
by Ian Lindsey Cheney '02
Ian
Lindsey Cheney is co-chair of the Yale
Student Environmental Coalition and director of the Yale Sustainability
Initiative. This article first appeared in the Yale
Daily News.
Ancient
radiators flush heat into crowded rooms in May, sprinklers
surge up from the Old Campus in the pouring rain, gas-powered leaf
blowers hum in the September sun, a grounds employee pours latex
paint into the drain near a soccer field, piles of wasted food slosh
down into a gulping sink disposal, and the light from our dormitories,
classrooms, and dining halls stains the sky orange and blocks all
but the brightest stars. Is this the face of the environment at
Yale?
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Yale
has been slammed repeatedly as an environmental loser.
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Derided
in the Chronicle
of Higher Education as "an environmental leader by no means,"
ranked below Harvard and Princeton in terms of its waste management
and gen-eral environmental policies, Yale has been slammed repeatedly
as an environmental loser.
Let's
take a closer look. Yale's doing some good things: A new environmental
studies major, a new provost's standing committee on the environment,
a state-of-the-art cogeneration plant, a motion-sensor lighting
program that saves Yale $800,000 every year, and a strong student
recycling program are strong steps forward.
But
the word on the street is justified -- Yale disappoints. Deemed unsightly,
recycling bins are not allowed in classrooms, entryways, or on college
pathways. According to the office of facilities, Berkeley College
consumes 92 percent more energy after renovations than it did before.
Students throw out at least 1,000 pounds of edible food everyday.
The gas-capable central power plant burned oil (the nastiest stuff)
all winter. Our campus
recycling rate hovers at a weak 20 percent.
The
competition, meanwhile, has fared very well. Oberlin College has
built a beautiful environmental
center, which exports energy to the rest of the campus. Tufts
has committed to reducing their carbon emissions in accordance with
Kyoto Protocol levels. Brown students tend an organic garden and enjoy a state-of-the-art green building. Middlebury's
recycling rate is steady at 68 percent. Harvard, bless its soul,
has established a fund to support cost-saving environmental design
projects.
Yale
officials should commit, in a formal declaration, to a vision of
an environmentally sustainable campus. But words are not enough.
The University should empower its students, faculty, and staff to
become active participants in the campus's future by creating an environmental stewardship committee with real advisory powers. Next,
Yale needs to draft, ratify, and implement a broad-based, detailed environmental policy covering all campus sectors.
As
the evidence of global warming penetrates the consciousness of even
the stodgiest skeptics, and as the world's population catapults
well above six billion, the Yale community should be flooded with
green. In the classroom, forest, frat house, theater, sports field, dance hall, dining hall, power plant,
library, and laboratory, Yale should exercise its potential to promote
and maintain a more diverse, ethical, and environmentally sustainable
campus.  |
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