To the Daily:

On Thursday, I was able to go to the Integrated Assessment town hall meeting (“U” officials talk campus sustainability at town hall meeting, 1/29/2010). It was refreshing to see large scale collaboration from the University. It takes a special effort to get a large collaboration at any inherently decentralized large university. Sustainability is just the issue that needs to be tackled via collaboration. Without this effort, different sectors could implement their own plans, which could actually impede the efforts of others on campus. Student groups could make plans for more renewable energy supplying the campus, but without working with the operations side of the University, they would never get their goal accomplished or learn what kind of effort it would take.

This town hall meeting didn't go into major details, but I was glad to see they had an entire group based around the cultural aspects of sustainability efforts. Some changes could be implemented by small, well-informed groups like the IA, but to get the larger and broader reaching goals accomplished, the community at large needs to be involved. We have to discover what campus cares about related to sustainability, and the best way to present the information. The cultural aspects group will be vital to bringing these issues to the larger campus community.

It is important for the University to set stretch goals that at the same time are attainable in a timely fashion. Succeeding in this ambitious project can hopefully lead to similar projects at other campuses or any communities that want to address sustainability issues.

Samuel Cohen
LSA senior