Congratulations to Matt Johnson ’07 and Anne Fox ’07 for your leadership to improve the quality of our campus. Matt’s “Don’t mess with signage” and Anne’s “Turn off the lights if you care!” really hit home for those of us responsible for the operation of our campus buildings and grounds. A recent editorial in the Argus titled “Resolutions are not always enough” mentioned that a WSA resolution “in favor of continued green energy use has yet to be seriously acknowledged by the Administration” and caught me by surprise.
Improving energy efficiency and, whenever possible, turning to green energy initiatives, has been a hallmark of the Administration’s energy policy at Wesleyan. This has been driven by both economics and student initiatives. Let me provide a few important examples:
-Our physical plant team works tirelessly to provide a quality campus environment for all of us, and we have an aggressive master plan to improve our campus buildings and grounds. Some of the things we are doing to reduce energy consumption include building new energy efficient buildings, replacing old inefficient heating and ventilation equipment, installing occupancy sensors on lights, insulating attics and walls in older houses, replacing windows, installing digital controls in our institutional buildings to monitor and adjust temperatures by the minute. The list goes on and on.
-The combined leadership of the physical plant staff and the student group EON (Environmental Organizing Network) led us to signing the Climate Change Action Plan—an initiative aimed at getting Wesleyan’s CO2 emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2010. We’ve actually reached the sub-1990 goal already, and in the process saved the university hundreds of thousands of dollars.
-We are revamping our waste management and recycling program. No doubt you’ve see new trash and recycling receptacles popping up around campus and many more are coming. Wesleyan already does lots of great things with recycling such as recycling all of our construction debris, discarded mattresses and furniture are donated to charities, and computers are recycled for schools and not-for-profit agencies.
-The new Fauver Field residences are being built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards.
-New senior houses will incorporate geothermal heating and cooling systems.
-We’re currently investigating the feasibility of replacing Wesleyan’s gasoline powered maintenance trucks with electric/solar carts to reduce fuel consumption and the wear and tear on our landscape. We are joining forces with a consortium of Connecticut colleges to enact changes to state law so that these vehicles can drive on campus streets like they do in many other states.
Many more initiatives are rolling out as we speak and a new web page will share our efforts and solicit help from our Wesleyan community.
Of course, we need the help of the entire Wesleyan community to lower our energy consumption. And to be honest, with all the positive things we’re doing to make our campus the best it can be, I become frustrated when I walk by a Wesleyan house in the middle of winter and see windows wide open and the heat drifting out. If a room is overheating students should call physical plant at extension 3400 and tell us. Everyone can help by pulling storm windows down in the winter to keep the heat in, the costs down, and energy use to a minimum.
Wesleyan also spends tens of thousands of dollars every year, and quite a bit of energy, to repair damages due to vandalism. We buy nice cozy sofas for the lounges and they get stolen and even set afire. Ping-pong tables and TV’s disappear within weeks and we find them destroyed at the end of the year in some house where they don’t belong. Paper messages are posted on signs, poles, walls and windows everywhere. It makes the campus look shabby, it costs money to repair the damage done by the adhesive, and what a waste of paper. There are so many more important ways we could spend our time and money.
Finally, with all this talk about “being green,” I have one last question—what’s with the litter everywhere? The responsibility for a more environmentally-conscious attitude extends beyond the administration to the entire Wesleyan community.
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