Originally posted at http://thinkgreenfund.org/

“As students, do we want to lead, or simply to follow?”

That’s the question Rice University students asked themselves during the Student Association General Election last week. When polls closed on Wednesday evening, the answer to that question was a resounding vote for leadership. With 71% of students voting to pay an extra $9 per year to create the Rice Endowment for Sustainable Energy Technology (RESET) it’s clear that students recognize the many personal opportunities and community benefits of campus sustainability.


While we’re excited about the many environmental improvements we expect from RESET, it wasn’t the environment, but rather the economy, that sparked the three-year effort culminating in last week’s victory. Inspired by the example of the many other universities with similar funds (at least 70 in the US and Canada), we began to look at Rice’s budget and were amazed at what we found. Over the past eight years, energy costs for Rice have quadrupled! Furthermore, over the last three years, on-campus housing fees have risen 20 percent, with a portion of these fees representing higher energy costs being passed along to students. When we also learned about the various efforts the university administration has taken in recent years to reduce energy use we knew it was time for students to stand up and do their part to keep costs low at our university!

Beyond the economic and environmental benefits, the successful RESET vote is also a victory for Rice students in fields ranging from engineering to biology to public policy. By allowing students and faculty to propose projects to a RESET committee, the endowment promotes student innovation by providing a unique opportunity to collaborate with professors, peers, and professionals to design and implement large-scale projects with a tangible impact in their community.

While RESET will be a much-needed tool for financing campus sustainability in this time of budget cuts and economic uncertainty, RESET alone won’t be enough. Luckily, administrators and staff from all over campus have demonstrated strong interest in providing matching funds for RESET projects. They hope it will provide students with as much as two dollars of benefit for every dollar contributed, marking an exciting new chapter in student-administration collaboration where student-proposed projects will receive financial and operational support from their university at a sustained (pardon the pun) and unprecedented level.

While Rice is hardly the first university to create such a “green fund”, it is the first school in Texas to create one since Texas State students established the Environmental Service Fee in 2004. With so many economic, environmental, and personal benefits to students and their communities, we certainly don’t expect it to be the last!

Posted by:
- Patrick McAnaney, Rice senior & Student Association president
- Carl Nelson, Rice junior & SA Environmental Committee Chair

Posted by Jacob Bintliff

 
“The world’s largest human power plant” may evoke creepy images of The Matrix, but think again!

Last December, student leaders at Texas State University used funds from their Environmental Service Fee to turn 30 elliptical machines in the Student Rec Center into individual-sized power plants. Now students can go green while getting in shape!

A 30-minute workout generates enough electricity to power a light bulb for over 2 hours and a computer for 30 minutes! Think about how many students work out every day on your campus…now do the math. The answer?  A BUNCH of renewable energy, and that much less energy your campus will have to get from dirty old fossil fuel sources.

On top of that, the new program has provided a great leadership experience to at least one Texas State student. Blair Hartley, a recreation management grad student has been put in charge of the program. Yet another example of Green Funds providing students with hands-on, cutting-edge experience for the growing green-collar economy!

The energy and C02 savings and the leadership opportunity aren’t the only benefits, though. “It’s more about changing the mind-set of the 30,000-plus students on campus,” Hartley points out. That’s right, Green Fund projects can build environmental awareness in ways that your typical administrative project (e.g. revamping the heating & cooling system) just can’t.

Does this sound like something you want on your campus? Never fear, the Texas Green Fund campaign is here! If you’re a student on any of the campuses where Green Fund campaigns are currently underway you can make this a dream come true for you and your fellow students.

To see a full(er) list of successful Green Fund projects from across the US & Canada, check out this amazing list.

Originally posted at ThinkGreenFund.org/blog

 
“I think that keeping it informal was pretty key.”

That was Jacob Bintliff, campaign coordinator for the Think Green Fund campaign which will help put student-backed green funds at up to 7 Texas colleges this spring. He had just spent his Saturday training student leaders from Houston, Denton, College Station, Austin, and San Antonio on key issues and tactics for creating green fees on their own campuses.

He and I were sitting down for a beer, both to counteract the huge intake of caffeine we’d suffered throughout the day, and to have a chance to reflect on where the campaign stood.

“Everyone seemed pretty engaged. They were taking notes, nodding along. At the end it seemed hectic, but people were getting stuff done – I saw one group put together a campaign video in like 10 minutes.”

He was right. These campaigns are on track.

The students at UNT decided they wanted to have a special election for the fee. We sat down together and went through campus election by-laws and policies and figured out that they’d need support from 2/3 of the Student Senate or a petition of about 1,800 students (5% of 36,000) to get it on the ballot. They’re going to do both.

The Aggie students may be the best organized we’ve seen so far, but they also have the toughest campaign rules to contend with. They have not begun campaigning because campus rules restrict campaign activities to one week before the election. Despite polls showing widespread support for sustainability funding among Aggie students, the green fund faces opposition from, ironically, the local chapter of Texas Young Conservatives (formerly Young Conservatives of Texas). It’s ironic because Rep. Fred Brown (R-College Station) was a co-sponsor to the bill that gives students the right to vote on green funds, and the bill was signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry – twice. Knowing that the measure is likely to pass due to popular support, the TYC have resorted to secretly attending environmental group meetings in the hopes of finding a rule violation in hopes of throwing the initiative out. It’s not likely to happen, though. The green fund supporters have been working with campus administrators for almost a year. They know the rules inside and out, and have been assured by the election commissioner that results would only be thrown out over substantive violations, not technicalities.

In addition to the students who made it to Austin for the weekend, groups from UT El Paso and UT Pan America met for planning sessions and called in to discuss progress and their ideas with us. All of this demonstrates why we’ve spent the last two years building a coalition of student organizers. We didn’t need a formal summit or to advertise our training. We called up student leaders from all over Texas, asked them what they needed, and developed a weekend-long program around those needs. Now we’re set to accomplish our most ambitious goal to date. That’s the power of working together.