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BY AMELIA POSSANZA

In print | October 9, 2008

“Anywhere else it would have been an A” — a popular slogan that appears on some official college merchandise — now holds true for Swarthmore’s environmental record as well as its notoriously deflationary grading policies. For the third year in a row, the college received a grade of B- from the College Sustainability Report Card. This sub-par rating has caused some members of the college community to question Swarthmore’s commitment to sustainability.

According to Vice President Maurice Eldridge ’61, Swarthmore’s sustainability rating was not updated this year because the college declined to respond to the annual questionnaire distributed by the College Sustainability Report Card, an initiative supported by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. “I suppose that what the grade reflects is that we didn’t really undertake to answer their survey because I don’t think we necessarily believed that this was something useful to do, and it wasn’t a way of addressing the issues,” Eldridge said.

Michael Roswell ’11, a member of Earthlust, said that the college should not be so quick to dismiss external ranking indicators and might actually benefit from prioritizing ratings like the College Sustainability Report Card. According to Roswell, the B- grade is a surprisingly accurate reflection of the college’s sustainability record, even if the methodology used to compile the Report Card is not scientifically rigorous. “It is indicative, if not reliable,” Roswell said. “The outside world is a good thing to push the college.” Among the fifteen institutions that received grades of A- were Williams and Middlebury, two colleges that compete with Swarthmore for applicants. The college’s conspicuous absence from the A-list of sustainable schools could reflect poorly on Swarthmore when environmentally conscious high school students submit their applications this winter.

According to Roswell, it is no longer a question of whether the college needs to change its approach to sustainability; it is a matter of how and when. Several student, faculty and staff groups have already been brainstorming ideas about how the college can change to reduce its carbon footprint.

Roswell is a member of the recently formed Sustainability Committee, a group of students, faculty and staff charged with generating recommendations to convey to the 2020 budgetary planning committee. “The committee’s job as a whole is not so much at this point to be a generator of ideas as to be the conduit,” Roswell said. To this end, the committee has already placed a suggestion box, the “green box,” in Parrish as well as an electronic version on the student and faculty dashboards. The box has already yielded a number of constructive suggestions, ranging from concerns over a perpetually switched on light fixture to more substantial suggestions for overhauling the college’s long-term approach to sustainability.

After a few preliminary meetings, the committee has already produced the framework of a long-term strategy that consists of “a cohesive, broad-based program of sustainability, a program that would necessarily include policy, curriculum and operations components,” according to Engineering professor and Sustainability Committee co-chair Carr Everbach.

Everbach discussed this vision with colleagues during a recent faculty lunch. He also shared more concrete recommendations for change, such as strengthening the college’s Environmental Studies program, giving out sustainability information during orientation and outfitting LPAC with a green roof.

“During the Great Depression, did Swarthmore turn inward?” Everbach asked. Continuing along the same vein, he drew comparisons between contemporary environmental issues intellectual movements such as the Enlightenment, Newtonian physics and democratic theory. With these measures he sought to impart upon his peers the relevance and urgency of environmental issues and to rally them behind the cause.

Toward the end of the lunch, Everbach assured his peers, “This is not a top down issue with the faculty pushing the students.” In fact, it is quite the opposite. Last week, Earthlust was collecting signatures for a petition urging the administration to get the college to use 100 percent of the energy budget for the purchase of wind power credits. Their efforts culminated in a rally on Friday to show student support for the petition.

The college already purchases some wind power credits, but this does not mean that the college directly taps wind turbines to run campus utilities. Electricity is generated in different ways, from wind turbines to coal-fueled power plants; whatever the source of the electricity, it is all conveyed through the same power grid. Because of this, it is impossible to attribute the electricity used to light classrooms and run computers to a particular power source.

What the college can do is offset its electricity usage with wind credits. Buying credits, in addition to regular electricity, finances wind farms and gives the developing industry an opportunity to compete in the national energy market.

“It’s a little mind boggling that we’re not using more [wind power],” Jacob Socolar ’11 said, an active member of Earthlust. Haverford has been offsetting 100 percent of their electricity usage since last year.

Currently Swarthmore holds a $20,000 contract with a power company that offsets approximately 40 percent of the college’s electricity usage with wind credits, the result of a 2007 Earthlust campaign. The contract is set to expire in May 2009, and offsetting the same amount of electricity could cost as much as $88,000 if a new contract is drafted. Also, in the near future paying for regular electricity could take a more sizeable chunk out of the budget. The Pennsylvania electricity industry will be deregulated by the end of 2010, which could result in a 10 to 30 percent increase in the college’s electric bill.

In addition to this enormous financial commitment, Eldridge identified another problem with the proposed plan. “It seems to me that [wind power] is more symbolic than real in terms of its effects on the campus and on how students here learn and become agents of sustainability themselves.”
Ralph Thayer, Director of Maintenance, shared Eldridge’s view that buying wind credits doesn’t change the amount of electricity the college consumes. “If you take that potential $88,000 the we would be putting toward wind energy and put it in energy conservation measures, such as insulating and changing our light schemes, I think it’s money better spent,” Thayer said.

Roswell and Jesse Marshall ’11 are trying to help the college identify just such opportunities for energy conservation measures. The two students, as part of their Operations Research class, are developing a program that they hope Facilities will use to analyze the efficiency of the steam plant. Roswell and Marshall’s model will allow the Facilities staff to identify pieces of equipment in the plant that could be insulated or replaced in order to maximize overall efficiency.

While no specific measures have been taken to advance long-term sustainability, Eldridge emphasized that the administration is taking the issue seriously. “I’m not really looking to fulfill my sense of pride by way of a national ranking. I’d much rather feel like the Environmental Studies interdisciplinary program is having a positive effect. I’d like to feel that Earthlust is doing its job of helping to educate the community … [The administration] is open to dialogue,” Eldridge said.

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