Be Blue, Go Green
Michelle Talent / Staff Writer / The USD Vista
The multitude of Be blue, go green! signs around campus are not just promoting a universal truism by encouraging people to follow the trend of being Earth conscious. USD has realized the importance of taking care of the planet that we inhabit. Our university has displayed a marked dedication to endorsing sustainable lifestyles among its students and faculty. The administration has taken many steps towards this goal with innovations such as the corn byproduct plastic cups, potato byproduct plasticware and many other inventive modifications.
The school’s continuing commitment to becoming more eco-friendly is shown through our sustainability task force. This task force was created by President Mary Lyons to investigate how our school could become more environmentally responsible. The group is led by Dr. Michel Boudrias and the vice chair, Andrew Gorrell, along with 14 other members. The sustainability task force has not only been behind many of these changes, but they also have a detailed two year plan for making our school greener and reducing our carbon footprint.
In fact, the University of San Diego just released a study on San Diego’s carbon footprint on Sept. 18. The findings detail the main culprits to be on-road transportation and the creation and use of energy. The authors of the study realize that while much of the carbon footprint discussed may not be directly caused by USD, it is no reason why we, as a university, should not be just as committed to reducing it.
Even though there have been positive university-wide changes, they may not address the problem directly. This point is the focus of the sustainability task force. The plan includes ideas such as developing a master plan for energy conservation, investigating transportation issues, establishing a sustainable residential living community, investigating how to install and use solar panels on the roofs of our campus buildings, replacing incandescent light-bulbs with compact fluorescent ones and much more.
Overall, the road map is incredibly comprehensive and ambitious. Every idea that the task force proposes would help make our campus one of the most environmentally aware in California. It is not clear if the task force will receive funding and support for all of the proposed changes, but hopefully donors and fund allocation committees will realize how important all of the changes could be to our school. There were two aspects of change in particular that the report seemed to highlight. It includes re-instating an environmental studies major at USD as well as making environmental literacy part of the core education requirement.
Furthermore, the task force has a newsletter where people can post suggestions for making the campus more eco-friendly. This newsletter has great information about the progress of our sustainability campaign and the many upcoming events to promote sustainability awareness. The newsletter can be found at sandiego.edu/gogreen/. While the original intent of the organization was to release a newsletter every month, the latest issue is from May 2008. Despite this fact, the newsletter is quite informative and also provides a link to the two year sustainability plan referenced. The proposed plan, which was submitted to Lyons, contains the suggestions for the sustainability task force report, so it also reveals projects that are either completed or have already begun. By checking that site, everyone can see how much our school has done for the environment and how much more our community can still do.