Emily Sybrant | Student Life

The Carter Carburetor site is contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), trichloroethylene (TCE) and asbestos. As part of Sustainability Week, the environmental justice tour visited the contaminated Carter Carburetor site. The site will cost approximately $27 million to clean up.

Each day from Oct. 17 to Oct. 22, students participated in activities that focused on different issues selected by the University’s Office of Sustainability.

“Our focus in structuring the week…was to highlight different issues on different days so students came away with a sense of what some of those big contributing components [to sustainability] are,” Phil Valko, director of sustainability, said.

In addition to more than a dozen other activities, the week featured a tour of the Carter Carburetor Site, a contaminated site used as a case study to explore the larger issue of environmental justice.

“This tour is just really about looking at this notion that everything comes from somewhere and goes to somewhere,” Valko said.

Though the building hasn’t been used in 20 to 30 years, the levels of contamination—from chemicals including polychlorinated biphenyls, trichloroethylene and asbestos—are unsafe. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website, cleaning up the site will cost around $27 million.

“EPA is sort of in the process of deciding how to clean it up and the time frame for cleaning it up,” said Kate Pawasarat, lecturer at the law school and member of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Clinic—a group coordinating with the community, the EPA and the owners of the building to ensure the changes are made.

Mosella Washington, a member of the Carter Carburetor Community Advisory Group, said neighbors are fighting the current owners to have the building torn down rather than simply decontaminating it. She said a cleanup would only be a temporary solution to the ongoing problem.

“To me, that’s unfair [to] just do a cover up,” Washington said. “If [people] don’t step forward and try to do something, nothing is going to [happen].”

Participants of the environmental justice tour also visited the Mississippi riverfront and discussed the environmental impacts of industrial production in the area.

Other events throughout the week included a tour of the facilities that handle the University’s single-stream recycling and composting, as well as the Tyson Living Learning Center.

The Living Learning Center, built in 2009, features net zero energy use and net zero water use.

“Everybody that attended that tour came back just buzzing with energy about what they’d seen. That was a really good way to start the week. We were actually able to tour one of the most innovative structures…in the world,” Valko said.

Despite the number of events planned over the course of the week, Valko said participation was less than expected. He attributed this to poor weather, weak advertising and the fact that the week coincided with many midterms.

Valko said, however, that he is pleased with the overall result and hopes the event will grow in the future.

“I’m just hoping that next year we just do it better,” he said. “We’ve only skimmed the surface.”

Danni Liu | Student Life

Sophomore Hans Bon Liu enjoys a lunch of locally grown foods in the DUC on Tuesday as part of the campus-wide Eat Local Challenge. For the campaign, dining stations across campus featured foods grown within a 150-mile radius of campus.

The different menus were a part of Washington University’s Eat Local Challenge, an annual event that promotes eating local foods in season.

Nadeem Siddiqui, the resident district manager for Bon Appétit, says that the University has two main reasons for using locally sourced products.

The first is that the food is often better quality, and improves the eating experience for students.

“The issue of having quality and flavor and to make sure the produce is grown with people we know, we get to know the farmers and they get to know us. Obviously when you’re growing local, the flavors are fresher,” Siddiqui said.

The second is that by buying local produce, the University helps to support farmers in the area.

“It helps the local farmers who know they can depend on an income source of our size and can invest in their farms. It’s a great thing that we can help, and get a really great product. We are trying more and more to help the local small farms,” Siddiqui said.

Siddiqui says that Dining Services is also interested in using locally produced ingredients because it is more sustainable than importing products from farther away.

Danni Lui | Student Life

Rotisserie chicken from Double Star Farms in Bluford, Ill. is served.

Dining Services defines local food as food that was produced within 150 miles of campus.

Students support the University’s effort to serve local food.

“I think the Local Food Day is a good idea. You save on energy cost for refrigerating the food and the gasoline for transportation, thus reducing the environmental and economical impact,” sophomore Grace Kroner said.

“I wish we did [Local Food Day] even more. It stimulates local economy and cuts down on emission…trucks don’t have to come all the way from Georgia,” senior Mike Kastelein said.

Still, students do not think that the University should serve only local food all of the time.

“It’s probably not practical to have local food all the time, but I would like to see as much as possible. Especially when the food is in season,” Kroner said.

Some students also shop for local produce on their own.

“We should push the idea of shopping locally. I get my food from Soulard, the food is delicious and [the purchase] supports local farmers,” Kastelein said.

According to Siddiqui, the day went well.

“This is a special event to bring awareness and education and have special dinners and meals so people can be aware of local farms. It was quite successful and it…was well received,” Siddiqui said.

With additional Reporting by Wei-Yin Ko

Students hope that having a director of sustainability will both help student initiatives come to life and make the entire campus more sustainable on an institutional level.

“The way I imagine it would go would be to provide the students a little more resource and a little more direction for when we have something we would like to do or if he has something he’d like to see done,” Michael Yue, a co-chair of the Green Events Commission (GEC), a Student Union executive group focused on helping students host sustainable events, said. “What the director of sustainability provides is ideas and directions for the University to be more sustainable on a larger level than student groups can make possible.”

The director of sustainability is responsible for promoting and facilitating sustainability activities, collaborating with students, faculty and staff and working to implement sustainable principles.

The position has been open for a year, during which time an interim director, Debra Howard, filled in.

Students mostly ran initiatives through Will Fischer, a 2010 graduate and former president of Green Action. Last year, Fischer was a fellow in the Office of Sustainability and has since been promoted to a full-time position as sustainability coordinator.

“Will was really helpful; it’s just that this year it will be easier with someone who has a viewpoint that’s different from that of a student,” Yue said.

Valko plans to take a collaborative approach to his office. He hopes that if he works together with others, the University will be able to decrease its footprint.

“There are so many people who are passionate about sustainability that within every group on campus there’s someone who is trying to move that group forward to be more sustainable,” Valko said. “If this office is going to succeed it’s got to be really collaborative. We need to build on each others’ efforts to find ways we can bring efforts together as a more cohesive whole.”

Valko, who started work on Monday, is focusing on familiarizing himself with all the various departments and initiatives on campus.

As a student at the University, Valko implemented a series of programs aimed at making campus more sustainable.

He started the first Committee on Environmental Quality, which was composed of students and faculty who tried to improve the sustainability on campus. He also helped form V.E.R.D.E. (Volunteers for Environmental Restoration, Development and Education), a program in the Campus Y that still exists. Students in the program go to St. Louis schools and educate children about the environment and sustainability.

Valko’s involvement extended to Green Action and the Sierra Student Coalition. He’s also a founding member of the Wilderness Project, a pre-orientation outdoors program.

“Phil is passionate. He’s energetic, and his enthusiasm is contagious. He will relate very well with students and also faculty and staff,” Steve Hoffner, the associate vice chancellor of operations, said.

Valko graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biology and environmental science. After that, he researched global climate change at the University of California-Davis before returning to St. Louis, where he first worked as data management coordinator for the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance, a nonprofit developer of areas where there is little money for rebuilding. His most recent job was with Trailnet, an environmental organization whose goals are building and maintaining bike and pedestrian trails.

Phil Valko, the recently hired director of sustainability, seems like a good choice for the job. He’s familiar with the school and has even started many of Wash. U.’s green programs that continue to this day. He’s knows St. Louis well, having worked with the community institutions to help develop underprivileged areas. Valko takes on sustainability as a personal mission and even bikes to and from school (ten miles) in order to decrease his own carbon footprint.

We only hope that Valko’s enthusiasm and ideas are not bogged down by administrative tasks and projects in which the Office of Sustainability has not been an equal partner.

The new bike plan is an example of an undertaking that the Office of Sustainability should have had more active involvement. The plan was designed by Facilities, with the Office of Sustainability brought in at a later date.

In our opinion, the school’s endeavors to date are more geared towards giving Washington University the appearance of a sustainable campus rather than developing a campus that is de facto sustainable.

Two projects include the showers in the DUC and last year’s Green Cup competition. The showers, which were ostensibly installed to promote biking to work, are rarely utilized. The Green Cup, a competition amongst the various Res Colleges and fraternities to reduce their carbon footprints, was poorly advertised and did not offer much beyond bragging rights to the victor. The winning fraternity received $500, and the winning Res College won a (literal) green trophy.

There are various smaller changes that could go a long way to reducing the carbon footprint at the University that we have not (as of yet) undertaken. Not all the lights in the residential colleges are activated by motion sensors, and in most of the bigger buildings, such as the DUC and Seigle Hall, the lights are kept on 24/7, even if the buildings are locked at night and rarely used during that time.

While Washington University isn’t going to solve the problem of global warming on its own, every little bit helps, and we believe that if we give Valko more freedom to enact his ideas, he can do something great.

With this freedom, however, comes increased responsibility. Valko should use his new position to enact some serious change to Washington University and get us beyond appearances, creating a truly green campus.

Students will be able to track their progress in real time through the competition’s website, greencup.wustl.edu, which goes live Monday. The winning fraternity will receive a $500 cash prize, and the winning Residential College will be awarded a trophy made of recycled green glass in a ceremony on Earth Day.

The four-week competition starts Monday with an event in College Hall. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton will address participants, and food, music, raffle prizes, and a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) exchange will be part of the event.

Over the four weeks of the competition, energy reduction will be measured by percentage in each participating residential building.

Devices called “current cost meters” have been installed in these buildings to measure electrical energy usage and have been specially programmed to only measure energy consumption for which students are directly responsible, such laptop charging and appliance use.

Residential Colleges can also earn points for everyone in the building who takes the online pledge, for the highest percentage of residents to attend the kickoff event, and for holding brainstorming sessions on each floor to discuss how best to reduce energy waste.

Individual floors will also have the opportunity to earn points for their Residential College in a sustainability-themed YouTube video making competition.

“We wanted to make sure that if your ResCollege fell behind in the competition, you wouldn’t be discouraged from participating in the competition,” said Will Fischer, a fellow in the Office of Sustainability who helped coordinate the competition.

Each week of the competition will have a theme, including “All Natural,” which will challenge students to minimize their use of electric shaving and hair care devices; “Paperless,” to reduce printing; “Lights Out,” to minimize use of artificial light; and “Total Shutdown,” to restrict their use of all unnecessary electronics.

In addition to the one winning Residential College and fraternity, individuals and suites will also have the opportunity to gain recognition within their residential building for outstanding commitment to the competition.

Each residential college director will be able to award one particularly enthusiastic individual and dorm as the Residential College MVP based upon nominations from their residential advisers.

Senior Chris Brennan proposed the idea for the Green Cup during his sophomore year, but several people told him it would be difficult to implement because there was no historical data for each dorm.

“I was told that Ameren delivered bills for the entire South 40,” he said, “but that the figures could only be divided on a square-foot basis, not by dorm.”

Brennan proposed the idea in an email to Chancellor Wrighton, who agreed to help make it happen. Brennan worked with Hank Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration, and Fischer to implement the program.

The competition will use devices made by Current Cost to measure electricity usage. This method was suggested by a University professor.

Brennan and Fischer have since partnered with the Office of Sustainability and a diverse committee of students, including representatives from the Congress of the South 40 and the Student Sustainability Fund to collaboratively plan the Green Cup.

“I’ve never been involved in any of the green groups on campus, but I’ve always been interested in [sustainability],” Brennan said.

Freshman Jake Lyonfields, a chemical engineering major who serves on the committee, views the competition as a creative way to promote energy reduction on a college campus.

“Not only does this event kind of bring to light what actions students can take to reduce their energy use, but it also does it in a format in which they can get excited about it. I think it’s unique and really cool in that regard,” Lyonfields said.

The Green Cup will conclude on Earth Day on April 22.

We do, however, want to make note of the hypocrisy inherent in this pledge, given Washington University’s continued affiliation with Peabody Energy and Arch Coal.

Gregory Boyce and Steven F. Leer are the CEOs of Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, respectively, and both serve on Washington University’s Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees is arguably the most influential force on the University: The trustees appoint the Chancellor, review and approve annual budgets and major capital expenditures, make final decisions on awards of tenure and degrees and on new degree programs, oversee the management of the endowment, and oversee and participate in development programs. In short, the trustees are responsible for overseeing almost every policy aspect of Washington University and thus are the steering force behind the operations of the administration, faculty and staff.

Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world, has long been highlighted as a major environmental offender. Peabody actively opposed the Clean Air Act in 1970 and acid rain provisions in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, as well as current efforts to strengthen mercury provisions. Many major executives of Peabody Energy head up the National Coal Council, which called for more than doubling U.S. coal consumption by 2025 in a recent report.

Last year, Peabody spent a total of $5 million lobbying Congress and other government agencies in an effort to block prospective climate legislation.

Arch Coal, the second-largest provider of coal in the U.S. behind Peabody, has been called into question for its practice of mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia, which reduces the height of mountaintops, removes all vegetation and contaminates mountain streams with mining waste. This contamination leads to flooding, erosion and an unsafe water supply, which in turn leads to the depopulation and disintegration of mining communities.

The “Peabody Plan” for eliminating energy inequality, released last fall, asks that at least half of the next generation be fueled by coal. It calls for replacing traditional coal plants with supercritical and ultra-supercritical plants, which are more efficient and carbon capture ready, and mandates that at least 100 major projects around the world capture, store or use carbon dioxide from coal-based plants within 20 years. It edicts the deployment of significant coal-to-gas, coal-to-chemicals and coal-to-liquids projects around the world over the next 10 years and heralds more efficient coal utilization technologies as the key to reducing the environmental impact of human energy use.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), however, estimates that if current petroleum usage is replaced by coal-to-liquids projects with no change in carbon technologies, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 119 percent. If carbon capture and storage technologies are employed, the EPA predicts that greenhouse gas emissions will still increase by 4 percent. It would seem, based on these numbers, that the Peabody Plan’s primary objective is continued coal profits—not sustainability.

Washington University’s endorsement of strategies similar to those promoted by Peabody became clear in 2009, when Peabody, Arch Coal and Ameren UE, whose former CEO is also on the Board of Trustees, contributed a total of $12 million to help found the Washington University Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. The Consortium seeks to advance research on carbon recapture and sequestration technology—in short, finding new and more efficient ways to use energy obtained from coal.

When asked about Washington University’s connection to Peabody and Arch Coal in an interview with Student Life in the fall of 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton said, “This is big business and we need all the help we can get. The carbon providers—by the opinions of others—maybe they’re the bad guys, but there’s no other game in town.” He continued, “We can’t take something off the table until we come to grips with our ability to meet the power demands that we require.”

We ask that Wrighton cease shying away from the dangers of the continued use of coal and the problems posed by the “Peabody Plan,” in particular the goals for coal-to-liquids projects. We find it patronizing that Washington University would ask us to sign a pledge for sustainable actions when its most powerful governing body does not seem to prioritize sustainability.

We also sincerely hope that, in keeping with the spirit of this pledge, students will direct activism at Washington University’s continued investment of resources in research on coal-based technologies—resources that, we feel, would be better directed at research that seeks to discover and implement new energy sources that do not harm our environment.

I love the idea of such a pledge, and I encourage the entire Washington University community to sign it. Given the dire threat climate change poses to our generation, we all share a moral responsibility to reduce our personal environmental impacts.

However, the rest of the Wash. U. administration seems to have missed the message about sustainability. While our school diligently works to promote personal lifestyle changes, many University decisions directly contradict its stated goal of long-term sustainability. And no Wash.U. policy is more hypocritical than our association with Peabody Energy CEO Greg Boyce.

Mr. Boyce is the leader of the world’s largest private coal company, and one of the arch-villains of the human race. Heard of Tony Hayward, the hated BP CEO during the Gulf Oil Spill? Well, Boyce is worse. His company has blown up mountains in the Appalachians, poisoned the water source of Navajo Indians at Black Mesa, and caused millions of cases of asthma and lung disease every single year, all in the pursuit of “cheap” energy from coal. And this doesn’t even include looming future climate catastrophes, caused largely by the carbon pollution from Mr. Boyce’s coal.

Unlike Tony Hayward, Mr. Boyce happens to be intimately connected to Washington University. He was recently appointed to our Board of Trustees, and Mr. Boyce’s company contributed $5 million to help found the Washington University Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization. Apparently, the University’s mission to “be an exemplary institution in our home community” involves being buddy-buddy with the worst corporation in St. Louis.

In a lecture last fall, Mr. Boyce declared that the only way to eradicate global energy poverty was to triple coal-powered electricity throughout the developing world. He completely dismissed the idea that the coming climate chaos will disproportionately burden the world’s poor, and could easily eliminate all of the recent gains developing countries have made in health care, education and quality of life. In Mr. Boyce’s view, climate impacts such as the floods that devastated Pakistan, the increasing desertification of central African farmland, and the impending global water crises due to melting glaciers are nothing to worry about. No, our collective mission should be to provide the world with more coal, climate consequences be damned.

But Mr. Boyce is not content to simply ignore the terrible impacts of climate change. He has taken a leading role in exacerbating climate chaos. Last year, Mr. Boyce directed Peabody Energy to spend $5 million on lobbying Congress and other government agencies in an effort to block prospective climate legislation. Peabody’s all-out effort succeeded, and climate legislation failed. While Peabody spends millions to promote its “clean” coal technology to the public, Mr. Boyce refuses to even acknowledge that humans are causing climate change. For all this bravado, Rolling Stone just named him the public figure fourth most responsible for blocking progress on global warming. He finished just behind the well-known environmental champion Sarah Palin.

Although we may joke about Wash. U. being a “bubble,” we are not removed from the outside world. The University’s decisions and associations have consequences that reverberate throughout St. Louis and the nation. Because of its close relationship, Washington University has essentially endorsed Mr. Boyce’s political massacre of climate legislation. Considering University initiatives like I-CARES and the new Wash. U. Sustainability Pledge, which are supposedly designed to work towards a low carbon and sustainable future, this connection with Boyce is disgustingly hypocritical. Our school works diligently to promote personal sustainability, but by supporting Mr. Boyce and Peabody Energy, we have opposed any national effort to directly confront climate change.

I close with a message for the Washington University community: Please take the new sustainability pledge, but understand that sustainability involves a great deal more than purchasing reusable water bottles. All of us must go beyond simple lifestyle changes and fight for transformative social change, both at the national level and on campus. And what’s the first step we can take on our campus? We can demand the removal of Mr. Boyce from our Board of Trustees, and demand that the University support strong national action on climate change. This is something I, along with many others, have asked of Chancellor Wrighton. Now, I ask you to join me. Demand that Chancellor Wrighton stand with us, not with polluters like Mr. Boyce.

Adam Hasz is the former president of Green Action and a junior in Arts & Sciences. write to Adam Hasz at

The pledge aims to deal with the issue of sustainability on a micro level, teaching the University community to take small steps toward becoming green.

Students, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to join the pledge by registering to participate online.

The pledge is broken down into five categories: energy, food, water, transportation and waste. It offers 24 recommendations to students who aim to incorporate more sustainable habits into their daily lives.

These recommendations include taking shorter showers, increasing familiarity with recycling laws and using the power saver mode on computers.

“I think the point is to give people an opportunity to learn more about the small parts about leading a sustainable lifestyle,” said Will Fischer, assistant coordinator for special projects and fellow in the Office of Sustainability.

The Office of Sustainability hopes that this pledge will make a lasting impact on students’ abilities to lead sustainable lifestyles.

“We are hoping to inspire students to make a change now and to retain it for the rest of their lives,” Fischer said.

Many students see the importance of this initiative and plan to support the pledge.

“I think I will do my best to follow the suggestions,” freshman Marcy Koonce said. “There are always ways to improve, and this will give me more ideas of what I can do to be greener.”

Other students plan to use the recommendations to build upon their existing efforts to be green.

Sophomore Andrew Tsai already turns off the lights when he leaves a room and uses the power saver mode on his computer. He hopes the recommendations will help him to expand his efforts.

Tsai has noticed that many Washington University students do not seem concerned with sustainability.

“Sometimes I feel like I am the only one doing it when I see the people using plastic knives and forks,” Tsai said.

Tsai expects that the pledge will raise awareness of sustainable actions on campus.

Deborah Howard, interim director of the Office of Sustainability, hopes that students will recognize the effects that their actions have on the environment.

“People may think that one person recycling bottles or unplugging idle appliances doesn’t make much of a impact,” Howard said in a press release, “But when large groups of people take these actions together, the positive effect on our world is substantial.”

To broaden the outreach of the pledge, students are given the opportunity to invite friends and acquaintances to join the effort.

“I hope people spend ten minutes to look through it. Hopefully in that short period of time, people can learn something from it. This is a learning experience. It is quick and really quite easy,” Fischer said.

Students can register for the pledge at http://sustainabilitypledge.wustl.edu/Pages/default.aspx

Josh Goldman | Student Life

Rabbi Andy Kastner recites the blessing over bread before dinner began at Sacred Meals on Nov. 18.

The students joined employees and clergy from Hillel, the Catholic Student Center (CSC), Lutheran Campus Ministry and other University officials for an interfaith dinner aimed at bringing the many religious voices of Wash. U. together for dialogue and community building.

“We wanted to bring people together,” said Brian Blosser, the Campus Ministry Intern at the CSC and a 2008 alum. “Sharing a meal with someone is sharing community.”

The idea for Sacred Meals stemmed from conversations between Rabbi Andy Kastner, the Silk Foundation Campus Rabbi at Hillel and leaders from the Lutheran Campus Ministry about sustainable eating practices.

“Making that connection of shared value, we just continued the conversation from there. It slowly grew,” Kastner said. “I think the idea originated really organically.”

Student leadership was central to the event’s success. Juniors Hannah Rabinowitz, Kelly Diabagate and Lee-Ann Felder and sophomore Alaa Itani all helped to facilitate group dialogue and plan the event.

Rabinowitz, who helped plan Pluralism Week last year, formulated the idea for some sort of interfaith dinner during the summer, at which point she contacted both Kastner and Father Gary Braun of the CSC.

The dinner, possibly the first of many, was not advertised publically. According to the event’s organizers, this enabled them to bring students together for a more intimate meal.

Every table featured at least one Jewish, Catholic, Protestant and Muslim student or adult.

“I was really excited with the turnout. We got a really diverse group of people of different backgrounds that can comment on different aspects of how food and their religion come together,” Itani, a practicing Muslim, said.

The event focused on dialogue surrounding the sustainable production and consumption of food. The dinner of salad and butternut squash and lentil soups was prepared with produce from the Burning Kumquat, the organic student-run garden. Challah for Hunger provided freshly baked bread, and the CSC provided china plates that could be washed and re-used.

Maddie Earnest, co-owner of Local Harvest Grocery, Café, and Catering, delivered a keynote speech before the meal. Local Harvest showcases local produce and meat from around Missouri and Illinois, with approximately 50 percent of food coming from within 150 miles of St. Louis.

“I think that, regardless of religion, food is something that we can come together on,” Earnest said. Earnest described ways in which omnivores and vegetarians alike can look for sustainably produced food free of chemicals, antibiotics or pesticides.

The junction of food with religious pluralism facilitated a lively discussion, featuring topics ranging from positive and negative interfaith experiences to a debate on the merits of keeping kosher.

“I think that food can unite all of us,” said Nadeem Siddiqui, the resident district manager of WUSTL Dining Services. “People are people. If you get to know them, then you can do amazing things.”

Senior Sylvia Johnson expressed an interest in keeping kosher, though she is not Jewish. Johnson’s motivation stems from observation of a friend’s dietary habits.

“I guess it’s the integrity of it,” Johnson said. “To treat something as black and white can be very helpful.”

Responses to the event have been nothing but positive.

“There are so many negative examples of religions that to have such a positive gathering share religious caring about local food, it’s huge,” said Rebecca Boardman, the pastor at the Lutheran Campus Ministry.

Rabinowitz said the event exceeded her expectations.

“I just felt like everyone there was really serious and committed to having a respectful and productive dialogue,” she said.

The event’s leaders say that, based on the event’s success, more interfaith events will likely follow over the course of the year.

“We put evaluation forms for students to fill out, and they were overwhelmingly positive. There was a lot of enthusiasm,” Kastner said. “The language that students used to describe the experience was not ‘program,’ was not ‘event’…but what they think was an initiative. It struck me that there was something more profound about this experience.”

Washington University has earned a B in a national group’s annual report card on college sustainability practices for the second straight year, but students and faculty are questioning how the group came up with its results.

Greenreportcard.org is a program designed by the Sustainable Endowment Institute (SEI) and claims to be the first website to present sustainability profiles for hundreds of colleges in the United States and Canada. Each university is assigned a letter grade in multiple categories and these grades are then averaged to determine each institution’s final sustainability GPA.

The grades are based on surveys and studies conducted over a period of two months by both school administrators and independent researchers. The Office of Sustainability provides information in response to surveys that the University receives.

Overall, Washington University earned A’s and B’s across many categories. But the University received a D for endowment transparency and an F for shareholder engagement.

Students believe that the report card is an indication that while the University is taking steps toward providing a more sustainable environment, there is still much work to be done.

“The breakdown of the grades reflects room for huge improvement in issues regarding the endowment,” said junior Arielle Klagsbrun, co-president of Green Action. “We still believe there’s much work to be done on campus, but we are glad to see excellent grades in food and transportation.”

Some students said they feel the University didn’t deserve its A rating in the climate change and energy category because of its ties to coal production.

“Although the University does work to reduce overall energy use, Wash. U.’s reliance on coal as its primary energy source is not sustainable,” Erika Gould, a 2010 Wash. U. alum, said. “That makes me question the A we received in the climate change & energy category.”

School officials also question the legitimacy of the grading.

“I don’t think the grade is fair,” said Daniel Bentle, the communications coordinator of the Office of Sustainability. “We’re trying to develop our own definition of sustainability. The report [does not] provide a concrete definition of sustainability.”

According to Bentle, universities must make public all information regarding their assets to get a high score in endowment transparency. This information, however, is under the administrative office’s control and not made available to the Office of Sustainability.

As for the shareholder engagement category, Bentle said that the schools that got a high mark have committees designed specifically to address those issues, and the University does not currently have a committee that deals primarily with sustainability issues.

The Strategic Plan for Environmentally Sustainable Operations, created by the Sustainable Operations Leadership Council, states that reducing the University’s emission of greenhouse gases is its primary goal toward sustainability.

Bentle also pointed out that there are many inconsistencies between the grades for different schools. A PowerPoint presentation on the ratings shows discrepancies, such as University of California, Berkeley’s transportation rating. While Cal received an A in 2009, it received a B in 2010 after the University had increased the students and staffs’ use of alternative transportation.

Another example of inconsistencies is University of Columbia’s green building rating. Columbia received an A in 2009 for its five certified Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) buildings, but it received a B in 2010 after the number of LEED-certified buildings had increased to six and the number of buildings that met LEED criteria reached 14.

“We’re looking for a more transparent, more objective grading system,” Bentle said.

According to Inside Higher Ed, there is an open letter that is circulating among university sustainability officers that questions and debates the usefulness and the accuracy of the assessments made by SEI’s College Sustainability Report Card. The open letter was signed by two dozen officers and was released in July 2010.

At this point, the University has not yet decided whether to participate in SEI’s report for the next school year.