The Journal

The Sustainability Coalition, while still in existence at Webster University, has not been very active this year. A new president has taken office, and sustainability is not at the top of the priority list.

Sustainability, a way of using resources so that neither the resources nor the environment are depleted, is a hot-button issue for many students concerned with global warming.

In November 2007, Webster University's former president Richard Meyers formed the Sustainability Coalition. There were several campus organizations dedicated to prompting sustainability, and it was thought that combining them under one umbrella group would make the effort more efficient. Deborah Dey, WU's former vice president for enrollment management, was put in charge of the Sustainability Coalition.

Now Meyers is gone and Dey has retired, leaving WU staff and students unsure of what has become of the Sustainability Coalition. Some faculty and students are under the impression that the coalition has been disbanded.

In the beginning

Meyers made it clear that sustainability was going to be a priority for the campus and its students in 2007.

"This year I am announcing that I want us to begin a serious look at how Webster can contribute to reducing the world's unprecedented scale and speed of environmental pollution and degradation," said Meyers in his August 2007 convocation speech.

Meyers started off the movement to a greener campus by creating the sustainability coalition with Dey in charge. He kept it going by signing the President's Climate Commitment, which pledges to eliminate the campuses' greenhouse gas over time, signing an action plan known as the Talloires Declaration, which commits to environmental improvement, made the recycling program more efficient and conducted an energy audit to assess where improvements could be made.

WU even joined the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

Changing circumstances

Karla Armbruster, associate professor in the English department and a chair of the environmental studies committee, who was on the coalition last year, said she wasn't sure if she was still on the coalition. She said the coalition lost some steam after Meyers left, as it was his brainchild. After Dey retired, Sustainability Coalition members decided it was best to consult the new president to see what direction to take. So far, however, Armbruster has not had any communication with President Elizabeth Stroble about the coalition.

Geoff Janovsky, who has been a groundskeeper for WU for seven years, is the recycling coordinator and has helped with sustainability on campus.
Janovsky disagrees with the views of the administration on sustainability. While administrators say sustainability is a priority of the campus and that WU will slowly be building on its sustainability efforts, he said administrators' egos and ridiculous rules have gotten in the way of something very important.

"(Administrators) have no clue about the importance of sustainability on campus," Janovsky said. "They play by their rules and if anyone gets in the way they don't care."

Lori Diefenbacher, a former coalition member, adjunct faculty member and MAT advisor-coordinator of experiential learning, said sustainability is important to WU, but that it hasn't been made a priority.

"I think the brakes have been put on, and it will be a few years before anything happens," Diefenbacher said. "Webster's heart is in the right place, and I do believe there will be changes. They're just not happening fast enough."

Susan Kerth, a WU media relations specialist, said the coalition was not disbanded.

"Dr. Stroble is charging the coalition to identify projects, develop a timeline, cost projections and priority," Kerth said. "Then, they're going to submit the proposals through the institutional planning committee as part of the facilities operation budget."

Still Important

Since the coalition's inception, a lot has been done on campus to reduce WU's footprint on the environment, especially in dining services. Dining services has stopped using plastic bags and has gone trayless at certain meals to reduce the amount of food that people waste and to save water that would be required to wash the trays. It also began using environmentally friendly chemicals to clean and wash dishes.

Even though the coalition isn't doing a lot right now, sustainability is still in the minds of WU's staff and students. Armbruster and Janovsky created the Facebook group, Webster Earth Alliance, which has 122 members, for students who want to work towards sustainability on any scale.

"My hope was that it would be very grassrootsy, and that people could organize things through the group," Armbruster said.

A new course on sustainability is also being offered, called Topics in Physical Science: Enhancing Campus Sustainability. The course description says students will use WU's campus as a laboratory and develop a proposal that they will submit to the university.

David Stone, director of facilities planning and management at WU, said sustainability was considered when putting on the new EcoStar roof on the Sverdrup building. The new roof is made from partially recycled materials.

New direction

Recently, Stroble named two new co-chairs of the coalition, Stone and Carol Adams, an associate vice president of academic affairs at WU's main campus.

Stone said his major function in the new coalition will be on facilities and efforts to make improvements in the facilities department, while Adams' main area will be academics and how sustainability is supported in WU's curriculum.

"The reason it's taken six to eight months to get rolling is
because there was never a formal structure," Stone said. "The membership kind of fell apart when Dr. Dey retired."

Stone said the coalition needs a more formal way of communicating and that the dynamics need to be restructured.

With the restructuring, more responsibility has been put on the Student Government Association (SGA). The group will have to identify sustainability issues and write proposals on how to fix the problem. The proposals will go through proper channels to see if the budget will allow the project to be completed.

SGA met with Stroble at the end of October for a follow-up to the Delegate's Agenda meeting that took place earlier in the semester. One of SGA's priorities was the request that WU hire a full-time sustainability
coordinator.

"They addressed the issue, but when they gave us the action item they didn't mention a full-time sustainability coordinator, but mentioned the added responsibility," said Nick Dunne, a junior public relations major and SGA's sergeant-at-arms and a member of the sustainability coalition.

Dunne said he understands that hiring a full time sustainability coordinator takes funds that WU may not have right away.

"All these issues can't be addressed at the same time," Dunne said. "As long as Stroble knows this is a priority for the student body and is willing to help us through that."

Stone said that the coalition would try to keep sustainability efforts coordinated outside the main campus.

"Some (campuses) are doing more, and some are doing nothing," Stone said.

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