I am deeply disturbed by the recent appointments of two coal executives to our University’s Board of Trustees. Arch Coal and Peabody Energy Company both have disastrous records when it comes to public health, labor standards and environmental quality. These charges take full shape in both companies’ adherence to mountaintop removal coal mining. This practice, in which the tops of mountains are literally blown apart and then shoved haphazardly into valleys as companies greedily grasp for coal veins, results in rivers contaminated with heavy metals, increased flooding, fewer jobs for miners, depression of local communities and much more social and environmental havoc. Do we, as a university, truly want to be advised and governed by companies that engage in practices so unconcerned with anything but profits?

Moreover, I find the Chancellor’s justifications for the appointments to be both frightening and lacking in judgment. He heralds coal as a resource that “has proven very important to our advance as a society.” I do not disagree with the facts of this statement, but the argument can easily be used to justify any number of horrors that occurred in the past. It is a research university’s duty to look to the future and plow new ground, and now is the time to explore new fields in energy. Chancellor Wrighton seeks to rest comfortably within the 20th century mindset—one guided solely by profits—that has wreaked human, environmental and cultural havoc. We cannot be moved only by numbers; that path leads to abuse, immorality and evil all in the name of the almighty dollar.

The Student Life article on August 24, 2009 says idealism must be found elsewhere. I vehemently disagree. Idealism is strong among the students and the faculty at this university. This spring, Washington University received a total of $35 million to research advanced biofuels and photosynthesis’s applications for energy. Students and faculty came out against the name of the recently formed Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The administration may be content to work within a flawed system, but I am not. We mustn’t resign ourselves to a system that has proven itself to be outdated, for then we ourselves become flawed. Instead, let us change the system and work for a better tomorrow. The steps must be small and Chancellor Wrighton is correct in saying that efficiency is the best place to begin our efforts, but efficiency should not be paired with technologies that emit CO2. We are paving the way for new sources of energy here at Washington University and all around the world. Idealism is alive and well at Wash. U.; it’s just that our new trustees wish it weren’t.

Peter is a junior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at peter.murrey@gmail.com.