Slippery Rock University is currently in the midst of a detailed and extensive energy campaign in hopes of making the campus as green as possible.
The university seemed to really take the initiative towards this following environmental issues a couple years ago dealing with the amount of pollution the campus was generating.
Now the university is taking steps to cut its energy use and be a much more environmentally friendly campus. The emergence of Evive water stations and new energy information panels in the dorms are certainly showing that the university is at least trying to be more energy efficient.
But while progress has been made, the university and the campus community still have a long ways to go.
To start with, it seems a little counter productive to invest money into large, electronically run, dashboards that eat up electricity to tell us how much the school is saving. Unless we’re missing something, it seems a little strange.
There are numerous other environmental issues on campus that need to be addressed.
It is still common policy for faculty to use tons of paper, while many don’t utilize online tools that would easily cut the amount used.
As reported on by the Rocket earlier this year, the university does have plans to become carbon neutral. The only issue is the end date for those plans is 2037. Earth could be a burning ball of fire by that point.
The recycling on campus could surely be improved upon as well. AVI is not required to recycle. It should be. The school has the power to add something like that into a food service contract.
What about cleaner forms of energy? We have noticed very little movement by the school into utilizing alternative forms of energy in order to become more carbon neutral. The school seems resistant to the change.
Yes there is a financial impact to consider, but we have a hard time believing no funding for better initiatives could be found. Maybe instead of spending millions in renovating buildings or building a new student center, some of the money could have gone to constructing solar panels or something crazy like that.
The water machines and energy dashboards are nice steps in the right direction. If nothing else, it shows the school is interested in some green movement.
The only issue is that movement is not moving fast enough in our current times. Environmental problems are not something that can be pushed aside until a later date. That has been a mind set for too many people for far too long.
It needs to change, and if the school starts to do a better job in its environmental practices, then hopefully that would serve as a fine example for the students as well. Particularly the ones that print every power point slide out. Stop that.
