University stalls forward movements made by sustainability programs

By Melissa Silverberg

In a semester when change become a crucial vocabulary word of American political life, University students saw their hopes for environmental change and increased sustainability stall, if not fail during the fall semester.

One positive step toward creating a more environmentally friendly campus community was the opening of the Office of Sustainability. The goal of the office was to try and help the University eliminate or decrease its negative effects on the environment, according to a Daily Illini article from Nov. 18.

However, the new campus office was not given as much importance as other University offices, such as Student Affairs, which may create difficulties for the Office of Sustainability in the future. Since the new office falls under Public Engagement, it may have less power than other campus units in creating change on campus, said Suhail Barot, graduate student and chair of the student sustainability committee.

Due to hard economic times, Barot said a lot of University funding that had been planned to go toward retrofitting campus electronics has been redirected.

Also, the Student Sustainability Committee had worked toward creating a kind of campus prairie project near the new Business Instructional Facility on Gregory Drive between Fourth and Sixth streets, but that this project has also stalled, Barot said.

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One of the biggest environmental setbacks for the University this semester came last week when a wind turbine project that had been in the works for years was cancelled unexpectedly.

Chancellor Richard Herman notified student leaders and GE, the company with whom the University had drawn up a contract to build a 1.5 megawatt wind turbine on the south farms, that University administration had decided to stop the project, Barot said.

“This was a really big deal to us,” he said. “Especially because they’ve been telling everyone all about it this semester and then went and killed it during finals week.”

Although Friday was the first day of finals week, more than 60 students came out in protest of the University’s actions against the wind turbine project, a statement Barot said shows the students commitment to bringing environmental change to campus.

“It is crucial the University should go ahead with the wind turbine project in order to prove that they are serious about their commitment to sustainability,” said Amanda Schield, president of Students for Environmental Concerns and senior in LAS in an interview to the Daily Illini published in a Oct. 23 article that voiced concerns over the University possibly cancelling the wind turbine project, just as they did on Thursday.

What to look for next semester:

Starting in June 2009, University colleges and departments will be responsible for paying their own energy bills, instead of it just accumulating in one large University bill, Barot said, which will hopefully make these departments more accountable and responsible for their energy use.

“It’s like when you live in a dorm, you don’t worry about how much energy you are using because you don’t really pay for it,” he said. “but once you move into your first apartment and get that first electric bill, you start paying more attention to how you use energy.”

Students interested in learning more about the environment will be able to register for a new campus-wide minor starting next semester that will be offered by the School of Earth, Society and Environment, which encompasses the departments of atmospheric sciences, geography and geology.

“We want to learn about these things and we want the University to do their job,” Barot said. “We’ve seen the impact of gas prices and what is going on in Detroit and we can see that these issues are going to affect our lives as we graduate from the University and beyond.”