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BY HANNA KOZLOWSKA

In print | Published October 22, 2009

After allegedly having communication problems with the Sustainability Committee, five students decided to write a letter to President Rebecca Chopp as a way to voice their concern.

“We do not feel wronged by SusCom,” said Jacob Socolar ’11 of Earthlust. “It’s just not working properly.”

According to Socolar, the letter is meant to trigger a discussion about the committee, which is the only administrative body on campus designated to deal with sustainability issues.

The letter was sent on Oct. 9, the Friday before fall break. The five signatories are Socolar, Jamie Hansen-Lewis ’10, Rebecca Ringle ’11, Michael Roswell ’11 and Elan Silverblatt-Buser ’12. The two environmental groups Earthlust and The Good Food Project — or Good Food — also signed the letter.

Shortly before publication Socolar attended one of the committee’s meeting to discuss the relevant issues and also to move the dialogue forward.

The commitee was created in the spring of 2008 as an ad-hoc body whose role was to create a set of sustainabilty recommendations for the college.

It is made of administrators, faculty, staff and students. Members include professor of engineering Carr Everbach, who acts as co-chair; Vice President for College and Community Relations Maurice Eldrige; Director of Dining Services Linda McDougall; and Ringle, who is also a Lang Center Intern for Sustainability.

The signatories of the letter emphasize that the problem is not the individual members of the committee but the body as an entity.

The signatories said that students’ issues stem from the lack of definition of the the committee’s role.

The committee’s website states that it was charged with making “recommendations to the President and to the College community regarding policies to promote environmental sustainability on campus.” After presenting its initial sustainability recommendations, the committee continued to serve as the administrative component of campus sustainability efforts.

Roswell, who used to sit on the committee, said that the it has not had a clear role since its first semester.

The problem with the definition of the committee’s role surfaces whenever an important decision needs to be made. There is a disparity between how the committee views its role and what students believe that role is.

Socolar said that there can be problems when students who want to undertake various initiatives are sent to get approval.

“SusCom can be counterproductive because it is the only ‘go-to’ for these initatives, and when it doesn’t make any decisions, the projects are blocked,” he said.

Good Food has encountered this obstacle when trying to get approval for the Swarthmore Chickens (Coop) project.

All committee members received the Chickens proposal before the meeting.

“We talked with them during their hour-long meeting and we were expecting some kind of approval,” said Hansen-Lewis, who is also one of Good Food’s leaders.

In deliberating whether it was its job to make a decision, the committee didn’t come to a conclusion. As several signatories of the letter put it, “they decided not to decide.”

Additionally, Lewis had the impression that the members of the committee were not well acquainted with the content of the proposal. “They didn’t even know about our website,” she said.

Good Food’s attendance at the committee’s meeting was an exception. The weekly meetings are closed and confidential.

Though the signatories’ views on whether the meetings should be open or closed differ, they agree that at least part of every session should be open to students or representatives of the environmental groups on campus.

“There are no question-and-answer situations. The avenues of communication are restricted to talking to separate members,” Socolar said.

Ringle added, “If the only way to communicate with students is to have open meetings, let’s do it.”
“SusCom should feel that someone is breathing down their neck,” Roswell said.

The committee is also responsible for the revolving green fund and Greenbox.

The revolving fund was put into place last spring after students voted that Student Council rollover funds should be spent on sustainable projets. Greenbox is a web-based suggestion box for students. Both programs neccessitate deliberation and implementation on the part of the committee.

“The committee is wrestling with itself as to what its goals are. They are flipping in between just voicing concerns and giving recommendations versus taking action,” said Hansen-Lewis.

Ringle added, “If SusCom wants to be only a recommendation body, it should be clear about it.”
Earthlust and Good Food are concerned that the only way to communicate with the committee for all types of issues is to send its propositions through Greenbox.

“There is a ‘black box’ aspect of Greenbox,” Socolar said.

Hansen-Lewis said that students feel like many proposals are either not answered at all or receive responses that “just give a light reason why not to consider something.“

“Greenbox is sort of an illusion, to give [the committee] a feeling that something is off their backs,” Hansen-Lewis added.

Ringle said that there has been a decrease in submissions to the Greenbox.

She gave a few reasons to explain why Greenbox has failed to function as students want it to.

For one, the propostions are reviewed only on a bi-semestral basis, and there is no designated person to do this. In addition, the propostions are not discussed at the committee’s meetings.
The signatories feel that their broad, comprehensive suggestions, such as the Chickens Project, should not be thrown in with some of Greenbox’s minor propositions, such as not using paper towels after hand-washing.

In the past, the small issues are what the committee has dealt with successfully, such as setting all the campus computers on automatic shut down. The signatories say that the committee is very hesitant to deal with larger issues.

“There is a general lack of boldness from the committee,” Socolar said.

Some of this “lack of boldness” may be the financial constraints that the school has been facing. The expensive proposal to increase wind power credits to cover 100 percent of the energy used by the college was discussed before the economic crisis, however.

There has been confusion concerning former president Al Bloom’s views on the subject.
According to Roswell, even before the economic downturn, the committee had a mandate from President Bloom to be dealing with issues involving no or low cost ventures.

Socolar said that Bloom told Earthlust that he was very excited about the idea of increasing windpower buying, but he said he would want to hear the committee’s recommendation on the subject.

“He wanted to hear bold decisions,” Socolar said.

The committee decided it did not have the authority to make any decisions concerning wind power.
Similarly, the Chickens Project was discussed for four sessions, resulting at the time in no conclusions. According to Ringle and Roswell, there are several reasons why meetings are so ineffective.

They both emphasized that there are no actual agendas for the meetings and things are often left undiscussed.

“We tend to talk in circles” said Ringle. “There are opposing views on the committee. The most radical people are also the most vocal.”

Roswell said that students are not a strong voice on the committee. He said that while he was good at making himself audible at the meetings, he started to feel like a broken record and decided to quit.

“I was more frustrated than insightful,” he said.

The signatories of the letter would like the committee to be active in both decision making and communication with students.

“If they would have said ‘no’ [to the wind power proposition], we would have respected that,” Socolar said.

He said that when it comes to communication, the committee doesn’t explicitly refuse to communicate. “They just don’t,” Socolar said.

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