Open Letter Regarding GFTH

• It has been a year since the start of the Greening from the Heart campaign, and since that time, we have made progress on our goals. We have begun comprehensive energy audits with Thermal House, we have built small wildflower gardens with community effort, we nailed together walls in anticipation of building projects, and we renovated a small space inside the Outdoor Program. In addition, we have educated ourselves and the community by attending sustainability conferences, meeting in classrooms about green architecture, and discussing campus environmental philosophy in the dining hall. These are just examples of what has been accomplished – by no means is it complete.
• However, the GFTH campaign is faltering. Despite the vast amount of energy and time many members of the community have volunteered to keep the program alive, we continue to suffer from setbacks that are fragmenting our environmental committees and clouding our efforts to make Marlboro a greener college. Many of our goals and projects are struggling to survive – the planned film and lecture series, campus-wide environmental ‘teams’, discussion of our wetlands, improving transportation efficiency, and others. While we cannot expect all of the GFTH projects to survive, there is something more important that we have lost in the campaign: community enthusiasm.
• It is a difficult thing to obtain, and impossible to move forward without. We have no lack of individual enthusiasm and dedication for our goals, and we have leaders who have stepped forward to direct projects. However, Marlboro as a whole does not know about these projects. We cannot change bad environmental behaviors unless the community understands that it is their task to do so. It is a community responsibility. If the college body isn’t involved in creating environmental goals, or doesn’t understand those goals, it will not willingly work to achieve them. Currently, we stand at this juncture of low community participation, and endless frustration of the EAC members and other environmentalists on campus.
• I propose a new way to approach this problem: let our community decide how to proceed. The many hours we spend creating these new projects in committees and offices are wasted if the community does not own these projects. As an alum, I know that as a student, I could not be as fully involved in a project if I didn’t feel that ownership. It could be small, but one has to be able to say “I planted that flower, I replaced that light bulb, I closed that door, I shoveled that path.” Currently, gardens are planted, and then ploughed over. Maintenance replaces light bulbs. Frustrated students, faculty, and staff open doors because of poorly regulated heat. There are other solutions to these problems, but we have to talk about them as a whole.
• We can help the community own the environmental mission statement by having it make the statement. A town meeting, dedicated solely to the environmental mission of the college, could work in a multitude of ways: we could create new goals, dedicate time and effort to projects that are exciting for the community, and discuss what we can reasonably expect from changing bad environmental behaviors. An EAC or EQC meeting could likely produce the same answers, but then it is a monumental task to put community energy behind them. Let’s start from the source of that energy.
• The community does not need to be involved in all the decisions or mechanics of GFTH, but currently, it is involved in few, if any. The EAC and EQC have important roles in these goals, but currently all of the work is dependent on them. It’s far too much to ask from already generous people. Let’s put the responsibility back onto the shoulders of the community.
• As with all ideas, this has its setbacks. The community’s goals and methods might not match current plans. It may decide to do far less than the EAC and EQC have planned. However, if there is anything to be done about Marlboro’s environmental image, it needs to be dealt with by the college as a whole. Without such change, I don’t think that Greening from the Heart can proceed, and I would like nothing more than to see its success.