The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) passed a $15 per semester student fee this past Sunday that will go towards the creation of a Green Fund for sustainable initiatives on campus. The student body will vote on the fee in the WSA mid-term elections.
The Green Fund will also include an opt-out mechanism that will allow students to forgo paying the fee.
“We think the vast majority of students on campus consider sustainability a top priority, but we also wanted to give students the option of participating,” said Josh Levine ’12, Sustainability Coordinator for the WSA. “If a student doesn’t want to support the fund or simply can’t afford it, they have the option of opting out and not paying the fee. It’s not mandatory.”
The money received from the fees will be reserved for future sustainability projects on campus.
“The Green Fund is a student-funded, student-managed pool of money that will be spent on sustainability initiatives on campus,” Levine said. “That money will add up to about $65,000 or $70,000, and that will be distributed by the students on the Green Fund committee.”
The resolution passed the WSA with a 31-1 vote.
“I was grateful and impressed by the WSA’s near unanimous vote,” Levine said.
Jeff Stein ’10, Academic Affairs Chair of the WSA, cast the dissenting vote against the “opt out” mechanism of the Green Fee proposition, preferring an “opt in” option instead.
“I would say having the ‘opt out’ mechanism specifically is somewhat underhanded in its attempt to have this be an issue adopted by students widely,” Stein said. “You are less likely to get the same amount of funds if you do an ‘opt in’ mechanism, which is to say that you would have students click a button saying they want to pay the charge, as opposed to clicking one to say they don’t.”
According to Stein, the fee, which totals $120 over four years, could create problems among students.
“To some students, that is enough money to go elsewhere,” Stein said. “It could go to beer or it could go to some other charity.”
Despite opposing views on the payment option, representatives from both sides of the discussion agree that the money going towards campus sustainability will be beneficial.
“I feel like I would pay the charge,” Stein said. “The money goes to green initiatives on campus, augmenting Wesleyan’s admirable attempt to ‘go green.’”
Environmental Organizers’ Network (EON) Green Fund Committee Chairs Julia Jonas-Day ’12 and Julia Michaels ’12 first introduced the idea for a Green Fund to Levine.
“We got the idea at a national conference on environmentalism in Washington D.C.,” Jonas-Day said. “A ton of schools around the country had it, and we were just wondering ‘why doesn’t Wesleyan have this?’ We really have no institutionalized source of funding for sustainability.”
According to Jonas-Day, the Green Fund will mitigate the lack of organization geared towards sustainability.
“Insulating senior housing is a big thing; senior houses waste a ton of energy,” Jonas-Day said. “We just haven’t had the funding to insulate them for years.”
The Green Fee proposal will next be voted on by the student body, and if two-thirds of voters approve it, the fee will proceed to the Board of Trustees for approval.