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April 2, 2004 > News > Trustees approve Rice sustainability policy

Trustees approve Rice sustainability policy

By Natalie Kone | For the Thresher

Rice now has an official statement expressing its dedication to environmental sustainability.

The Board of Trustees approved the Rice University Environmental Sustainability Policy March 25. The policy acknowledges that environmental sustainability is an important goal and encourages students, faculty and staff to raise their environmental awareness. The policy further asserts that the university will adapt to evolving needs and technological advancements.

Rice has always tried to act in an environmentally conscious manner, Vice President for Finance and Administration Dean Currie said.

“In a sense, the policy codifies the commitment Rice has had all along to sustainability,” Currie said. “There are constantly new ideas and approaches across just a huge range of Rice’s activities and Rice’s interactions with the environment.”

The university will hire a sustainability coordinator to oversee efforts to address campus sustainability concerns if the new position is authorized in the annual budget process in July, Currie said.

In consideration of the university’s chief commitment to instruction and research, Rice’s new policy is cost-conscious, Currie said. However, there are many steps the university can take to improve the campus’s ecological condition that do not pose financial obstacles, he said.

“It’s wrong to think of sustainability as a trade-off between helping the environment and running up costs,” Currie said. “The tough call in sustainability is when something has a significant effect on the environment and a significant cost.”

The idea for an official university environmental policy began about five years ago in UNIV 303: Rice into the Future, Student Association Environment and Facilities Committee co-Chair Guyton Durnin said. The course focuses on ecological concerns.

Class members have submitted environmental proposals in previous years, but President Malcolm Gillis rejected them because they were not specifically Rice-oriented, Durnin, a Will Rice College sophomore, said.

Wiess College junior Phil Levine, who co-chaired the Environment and Facilities Committee during the fall semester along with Sid Richardson College junior Miller Henderson, took the UNIV 303 course last year and brought the idea of creating a university environmental policy to the SA, Durnin said.

The Student Recycling Council, the Environmental Council, the SA Environment and Facilities Committee, and other interested SA members revised the drafted policy to make it more Rice-oriented before submitting it to the SA Senate for review, Durnin said.

“We wanted something specific for Rice,” Durnin said. “We didn’t want something that would be similar to all the other universities’ [policies]. We wanted something that would actually stick.”

In forming the policy, students discussed such measures as holding recycling drives and coordinating all of the university’s environmental groups, Durnin said. None of these specific actions, however, are explicitly outlined in the policy.

Former SA co-President Michael Leggett reworked the policy again before finally submitting it to Gillis, who modified the policy and presented it to the board, Durnin said.

Sid senior Victoria Rodriguez said she thinks the policy will be valuable to Rice.

“It seems like there’s a lot of loopholes for change as the university evolves so that the policy measures can evolve along with it,” Rodriguez said.

Baker College freshman Kelsey Israel-Trummel said the policy may be too vague to accomplish much.

“I think that the sentiment is good, but it doesn’t seem that it does much,” Israel-Trummel said. “It has admirable intentions, but it seems kind of empty.”

Gillis said he supports the policy.

“The policy is a good thing because it formalizes the university’s commitment to sustainability from the highest levels: the Board of Trustees,” Gillis said. “It is important to me because I have been teaching and researching in sustainable use of natural resources for many decades.”

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