When Gabe Fries ’09 was doing work study on campus last semester, he noticed that he was receiving multiple slips of paper each week that indicated how much money was being directly deposited into his account.
“I felt that these slips were a waste of paper and ink,” Fries said.
So, when Fries received a campus-wide e-mail last spring announcing Project $ave and asking for student suggestions to cut costs around the school, he quickly responded.
“I’ve always been frugally-minded and environmentally conscious, so the project instantly appealed to me,” Fries said.
He suggested that instead of sending out multiple slips every week, the University should create an online paycheck system where students would be able to track their payments.
According to Edwin Below, director of administrative applications and the main project coordinator, 170 ideas were submitted last semester. Sixty percent were student generated.
Fries’ idea for cutting paper costs was chosen for immediate implementation, and he won an iPod. Other students with applied suggestions won gift certificates to Red and Black and Pi Café.
“It was very exciting,” Fries said. “I had thought about buying an iPod over the summer, but I’m glad I didn’t.”
Project $ave, started last March, is an initiative to collect, review and implement new ideas for sustained cost savings and improved efficiencies throughout the University Community.
According to Below, the project was approved by the president’s staff with a twofold purpose: to increase awareness in the community of the budget pressures the University is facing, and to engage the community at the grassroots level to identify and suggest areas for savings and efficiencies.
“We thought that among the students, faculty and staff there would be a different perspective on how to save money or be more efficient and we wanted to collect those ideas,” Below said. This semester, the project has distributed free compact florescent light bulbs to students during orientation and at the student activities fair. These bulbs use only a quarter of the power of regular sixty-watt bulbs while emitting the same amount of light.
Of the multiple ideas suggested last semester, and the five or six that have been received this semester, several are already in action.
“We have tried to respond to all the ideas,” Below said, “Some have been implemented, others are being worked on.”
Students are not only asked for ideas, but can also get involved on an administrative level. Last year, Estrella Lopez ’07 and Benz Phichaphop ’08 served on the team that reviews and discusses ideas submitted.
“Many times when one works at the planning end of things, one does not have the opportunity to see how things are implemented so it is important that [the administration] is able to receive input from those who do, namely the members of the Wesleyan Community,” Lopez said.
Although there has been a large amount of action surrounding this project, there is still much to be done on the path towards cutting costs and increasing efficiencies.
“More input from students, staff, and administrators would definitely help increase the project’s effectiveness to save time, energy, [and] money, benefiting both schools and students,” Phichaphop said. “While we mainly look for large-scale saving projects which would save a lot of money, we will continue to work on smaller projects which also benefit the community and are easier for students to suggest.”
Some students have voiced concerns that Project $ave puts cost-cutting before helping the environment. In a recent series of Wespeaks, students have heatedly debated the topic.
“Project $AVE and initiatives like it around the world mislead a generation of youth to the conclusion that saving money is more important than saving the environment,” wrote Ashley Casale.
However, some students do, in fact, recognize the merits of the program.
“I noticed a recent Wespeak in which some students complained that the project shouldn’t be so focused on saving money,” Fries said. “While I respect the ethics of their argument, the sad fact of the world is that things don’t usually get done unless there is a financial incentive. Moreover, I think it is better that Project $ave exists than no project at all.”
Leave a Reply