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Most Boston College students would panic at receiving a C- on an exam or midterm paper. On this year's College Sustainability report card, a C- is exactly what the University received. The report, conducted by the Sustainable Endowment Institute, issues grades to 100 universities annually based on common campus environmental practices and the efficiency of endowment policies. BC fared well below par in comparison to other assessed universities, considering Harvard and Dartmouth both received a grade of A- while Duke and MIT received a B and B-, respectively.
A full breakdown of BC's score reveals that the school earned relatively decent marks for "climate change and energy" and "food and recycling." The overall grade was brought down significantly after failing under the assessment of "endowment transparency" and "shareholder agreement." One common misconception in the evaluation of environmental sustainability is to neglect the importance of endowments and investment priorities. People have a proclivity to consider only very general aspects of environmental sustainability, such as littering, as important to the movement.
According to Maura Cowley, the North East organizer of the campus climate challenge for the Sierra Student Coalition (SSC), "endowments are important because schools can hold a lot of power for shareholders. Endowments can push shareholder votes for certain beneficial policies." BC's endowment policies are incredibly poor due to the fact that the University does not disclose its holdings or shareholder voting record to the public. On the flip side, schools like Harvard and Duke have open, transparent endowment policies that show exactly where donated money goes. "With these open policies, the public knows that the school is not investing in dirty companies and students can be represented in important decision-making," said Cowley.
Compared to other schools that Cowley has worked with in the SSC, she said of BC, "There's a lot of room for improvement especially as pertaining to energy usage." Environmental organizations on campus have addressed these problems and are attempting to make improvements. This past year such clubs like Ecopledge have put forth great effort to address the campus' dangerously high and expensive energy usage.
Currently, the club is waiting for approval by the board of trustees on a clean energy purchasing policy, which will put forth large sums towards the introduction of clean energy production on campus.
This revolving loan fund will eventually reimburse the University through the money saved on other energy sources. Upon approval, the policy should increase clean energy by 30 percent in a year and 60 percent by 2010. Currently the petition has 1,400 student signatures even though only 1,000 were required.
The University is taking other proactive steps towards environmental sustainability. This year, Boston College is participating once again in the third annual "Recyclemania," a nation-wide competition between 200 universities beginning February 15 th to reduce waste emissions and promote healthy recycling methods. Schools are ranked based on the largest amount of wastes per capita recycled and least amount of disposed trash per capita. Last year, Boston College earned 33rd place, while Harvard took home first place. This year, Recyclemania coordinators want to focus on collecting recyclables from residential halls.
George Arey, an assistant director in the Office of Residential Life, hopes that the competition between schools will inspire more students to participate. "If we get students to really pay attention to the program, we can even save the University a lot of money," said Arey. Along these lines, Arey also related that other policies enacted on campus will be able to lower the costs of energy usage.
Most recently, BC has put forth $250,000 to install more efficient electrical meters in residential halls. In past years, electricity and energy reports have been a composite of three or more buildings, making it extremely difficult to differentiate where the bulk of energy has been used.
The new meters, installed this year with money donated also by the facilities office, record energy usage in individual buildings. This will help the University target occurrences of high energy usage so the problems can be identified and eliminated. Arey also hopes that education and social programs will be implemented in individual residential halls. With the help of resident assistants, students will learn all the necessities to lower the campus' energy usage.
Ecopledge member Katie Walsh, A&S '08, also claims heedlessness to recycle and turn off electricity is a prevalent bad habit among most BC students. Two seemingly insignificant but incredibly beneficial things any student can do is recycled as much as possible and remember to turn off lights. "Most students feel that BC 'owes them something' to compensate for high tuition costs. What they don't realize is that neglecting to turn off lights actually raises BC's energy usage, which in turn will only raise tuition in the future," said Walsh.
Walsh also feels that environmental problems within the BC community should not be blamed solely on the flippancy of students. Administrative changes carry great impact and have the potential to aid in improving BC's sustainability grade. The desire to get the administration involved in environmental efforts is not necessarily a local issue. As indicated by the individual breakdown of BC's overall score, the administration on campus received merely a C rating.
Environmental student-run organizations on campus have made impressive efforts to improve sustainability on campus. Walsh hopes that Recyclemania will publicize the need for a change on campus.
Ecopledge and other environmental clubs strongly advocate that student involvement is the best way to achieve results on campus.
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