USC forms committee for sustainability
The Sustainability Steering Committee hopes to set environmental benchmarks.
By: Kate Mather
Posted: 2/4/08
In an attempt to make the campus greener, USC administrators has
created the Sustainability Steering Committee to coordinate existing
student and faculty environmental work, marking the first time
administrators have led collaborative sustainability efforts.
"I think the important thing is that this is coming from an
administrative level," said Ruchika Gupta, vice chair of USC's chapter
of CalPIRG and a junior majoring in international relations.
"Until now, a lot of faculty and staff wanted to make changes, but it's
hard to do at this school because it is really decentralized. Really
the only way for big change to happen is for it to come from the
administration."
The group is comprised of 12 members and includes faculty, staff, administrators and student leaders.
These members, appointed by the Senior Vice President of Administration
and General Counsel, must play a "potentially large role in the area of
sustainability," according to the group's mission statement. Each
member represents one specific area of campus life, which include
auxiliary services, student affairs, capital construction development
and student government.
"In order to get real value out of it, you need to get the whole
community involved," said Ed Becker, the executive director of
environmental, health and safety and a member of the Steering
Committee. "It's not as effective if you don't get the larger community
involved and get all of their ideas and perspectives. They each have
something to lend to the process that is valuable."
Student involvement was also one of the key goals of a previously
formed committee, the Operations Sustainability Committee, in which
teams of students and faculty members examined how 15 different campus
facilities were working toward sustainability.
The committee's first report, published in January, provided
recommendations for additional sustainability measures the university
could take part in.
Reports published by the Operations Committee will be given to the new
Steering Committee, which will work to achieve the outlined
recommendations. This is a key step in making the university more
sustainable, as the administrative-led Steering Committee has the
authority to enact the Operations Committee's recommendations on a
large scale, many involved have said.
"The [Operations] Committee that wrote this report are the people that
deal with these things every day," said Max Slavkin, USG vice
president. "But when it comes to implementing it with the budget and
the resources, most of these people don't have the power to do that.
This one is going to be better because it's going to have a lot more
power. The new committee has the people on it that do make those
decisions."
Although detailed actions of the Steering Committee will not be
determined until its first meeting at the end of February, the group's
mission statement says that one of its primary responsibilities is
"benchmarking trends in institutional sustainability and identifying
the best economic, social, environmental opportunities on which USC can
act."
"This group is trying to get a definition of what sustainability means
for USC," Becker said. "We need something specific to USC's conditions,
location and environment … We're trying to find out what is unique
about our campus and find something that can fit that."
While the Steering Committee will work toward large-scale
sustainability, student groups who have previously criticized the
administration for its lack of environmental effort question the
committee's future effectiveness.
"It's a good step as long as the school actually moves forward with it
aggressively instead of cautiously," Gupta said. "I'm glad the school
is taking these steps, but we're still pretty far behind most other
schools in California. For this committee to really be effective, they
need to make the effort to make change happen and they need to
demonstrate how strong their commitment is."
Despite these concerns, those involved within the Steering Committee have high hopes for the group.
"I think it will create long term change for the university, but with
any project the university takes, things take time," said Albert Lai,
president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate and a member
of the Steering Committee. "Nothing is going to change overnight.
Students, faculty and staff need to be cognizant of that and give this
committee a chance to have an impact on what happens."
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