Monday, the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), in conjunction with the Environmental Organizers’ Network (EON), passed a resolution calling for sustainability in the future Molecular and Life Sciences (MLS) building, for which construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, and promoting a campus-wide Green Building standard. The standard aims to have every new building on campus earn Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification, as set by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The resolution, written by members of EON and presented to the WSA during its meeting on Monday, represents EON members’ hopes that the Board of Trustees will heed the concerns of environmentally conscious students.
Brendan McEntee ’10 said that a WSA resolution is the most effective way of communicating with the administration, and he expressed hope that the Board will take its obligations to the environment seriously.
“WSA is the students’ voice and, clearly, we have spoken,” McEntee said. “We want Wesleyan to be part of a sustainable and viable future. I will be upset if the University chooses to ignore us, the students, the essence of this school.”
To earn LEED Gold certification, a new construction project must include a large number of Green features including, but not limited to, rainwater collection options, recyclable doors and windows, solar-energy panels, and the use of rapidly replenishing materials such as bamboo or cork oak. Greg Silver ’10, the undergraduate representative to the new MLS Building and Design Committee and a member of EON, characterized LEED certification as dependent on a building’s energy consumption.
“To attain LEED Gold certification, a building’s spaces must be hyper-efficient in terms of their energy consumption,” he wrote in an e-mail. “This kind of efficiency is a primary objective for the planners of the new building.”
Silver went on to say that the realization of such efficiency requires those funding a potential Green Building to accept an initial financial sacrifice. He said that the money lost would eventually be recuperated in the form of saved energy costs, and lamented that such savings can be difficult to foresee.
“When there is a financially conservative oversight team, it can be difficult to ‘Green up’ a building,” Silver said. “It becomes easier to build Green when you have a local government that helps pay for the up-front costs through incentives to construct sustainable buildings. The state of Connecticut happens to be very generous and offers many incentives of this kind—many of which will likely be put to use on the new MLS building.”
The perceived implications of adopting the resolution would include assuring the University community that investing in Green construction standards is economically sound. Such a decision would also hint at the administration’s more long-term commitment to setting an environmentally sustainable precedent for other institutions.
“Many universities have LEED certified Green buildings, and it seems logical that Wesleyan, of all places—with its insistence on responsible citizenship—should also strive for sustainable architectural practices,” said EON member Anne Rosenthal ’10.
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