Editor,

When will Pomona green its campus? The answer must be now.

In a quiet revolution America’s colleges and universities are making the environment a top priority in their policies. The "green campus" movement is becoming commonplace among higher education institutions. Middlebury, Smith, Emory, Georgia Tech, UNC, Bryn Mawr, Duke, Brown, Yale, Caltech, and University of Oregon are just a few of the schools that have adopted green campus guidelines. Stanford, Harvard and Tufts have all committed to follow the standards of the Kyoto accords, reducing their carbon dioxide emissions 7% by 2008-2012. The Associated Colleges of the South, a group including schools such as Davidson, Rollins, and Rhodes, are implementing a project to make environmental concerns an integral part of campus life and learning. Oberlin, UNC, Middlebury, University of Michigan and Tufts have or are planning to build low environmental impact buildings. These commitments are not simply vague promises; they include specific ways in which energy use, building materials, emissions, and resource consumption will be reconsidered and reformed.

It is crucial that Pomona join this movement to take responsibility for our campus’s ecological impact. Colleges and universities are the leading intellectual and progressive institutions of a nation; they produce literature, start movements and set public standards. By committing to minimize our environmental damage, Pomona can be a leader in the movement towards sustainable living. We as students should be able to live in accordance with what we learn here at Pomona. Students need to be able to live in the dorms, eat in the dining halls, use classrooms, and enjoy the outdoor campus without causing significant environmental damage.

Now is the ideal time for Pomona’s administration to make a multi-disciplinary commitment to the environment by adopting an environmental policy, purchasing or producing green energy, constructing and renovating buildings as to minimize their ecological impact, implementing state of the art recycling and composting systems, making land preservation a top priority, and creating strong environmental studies and environmental science programs.

Sincerely,

Emily Tenenbaum ’04