Barnard College receives poor grade for second year in a row; administration points blame at survey group
Barnard students are accustomed to success. So when the school was given a D+ on a report card measuring environmental stewardship recently, it raised more than a few eyebrows.
“I was really surprised because everywhere you look on campus, recycling and conservation seem to be a top priority,” said sophomore Sharon Redding.
But the school nearly received a failing grade on the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, an annual report issued by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. Founded in 2005, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization collects data from colleges across the nation, assessing their sustainability efforts in campus operations and endowment practices.
Recycling centers on Barnard's campus make it convenient for students to drop off items.
Largely supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Sustainability Report Card is part of a growing number of national rankings dedicated to sizing up college and university sustainability efforts. This year, the Princeton Review released its second annual “green” grades, and the Sierra Club published its yearly report on the nation’s 135 most “eco-enlightened” colleges.
Holly Menten-Weil is a senior at Barnard and member of EcoReps, the college’s freshman environmental ambassador program and most prominent on-campus environmental organization. She believes the Sustainability Report Card’s grade does not accurately reflect the school’s efforts.
The report card, based on publicly accessible information and surveys sent out to each college’s administration and student groups, assigns grades in nine categories: administration, climate change and energy, food and recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities and shareholder engagement. The grades from each category are then averaged into an overall grade.
This year, Barnard dropped a full letter grade from last year’s C-.
“It’s not a complete view of our school,” Menton-Weil said. “A lot of things are missing.”
In her view, that includes a great deal of information about Barnard’s sustainability practices that never reached the reviewing committee. Electronic surveys sent out in June and July by the Sustainable Endowments Institute were overlooked by Barnard’s EcoReps, who were away on summer vacation.
Menten-Weil says the student group, which is paid by the college, failed to put someone in charge of regularly checking e-mail during the break. However, the surveys were also sent to school administrators.
Lisa Gamsu, vice president of administration at Barnard and chair of Barnard’s Sustainable Practices Committee, got the email but declined to participate in the organization’s questionnaire process. She said the Sustainability Report Card refused to provide criteria for its rating system.
“We had legitimate questions about the credibility of the report card because they would not answer our questions,” Gamsu said.
Representatives of the Sustainability Report Card maintain that its grading of the college was still accurate. A spokesperson says research was done using publicly available information from resources such as the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment and the U.S. Green Building Council.
Menten-Weil said the breakdown shows that Barnard needs better communication with student environmental groups and a sustainability coordinator on staff.
EcoReps is an environmental outreach group sponsored by Barnard’s First Year Focus Program, intended primarily to focus on sustainability education for freshman. The 10-person team of full-time students is responsible for teaching the merits of “going green” and recycling on campus in the form of dorm activities and events. Menten-Weil says EcoReps acts as the closest campus operation Barnard has to a sorely-needed sustainability coordinator.
At many colleges, a sustainability coordinator serves as a professional director and informed spokesperson for various environmental projects and activities throughout campus. Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth all employ full-time sustainability coordinators, as do hundreds of other colleges and universities across the United States.
Menten-Weil argues that Barnard’s lack of a sustainability coordinator made it difficult to track all environmental activism on campus, thus adversely affecting Barnard’s sustainability rankings.
Beyond the EcoReps, Barnard employs a Sustainable Practices Committee that holds meeting three times per semester. Student representatives say the committee has struggled to get things done this year because the coordinator in charge of organizing and implementing the committee’s ideas resigned this past summer. The position has not been filled.
Recycling hubs allow students to recycle e-waste, batteries, books, and other reusable materials.
Gamsu, who heads the group, says the Sustainable Practices Committee is evidence of the college’s dedication despite constrained financial resources.
“We do not have a full-time coordinator, but we do consider sustainable business practice a priority, ” said Gamsu.
In fact, Barnard has made concerted efforts in recent years to promote sustainability on campus, according to Gamsu. Barnard’s on-campus recycling program extends beyond New York City’s legal recycling requirements by employing an outside contractor to manage campus waste. Hiring a private contractor, while costly, allows the school to recycle electronic waste, books and batteries, in addition to traditional items such as plastic, paper and glass.
Barnard’s Hewitt Dining Hall employs a compressing machine that turns food scraps into gray water, effectively eliminating the need to truck out food waste. Less trucking translates into fewer fossil fuel emissions. Barnard students have also participated in city-wide environmental initiatives such as Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 Challenge and Park(ing) Day NYC.
Barnard’s new Diana building, still under construction, is seeking LEED Silver certification, which indicates the college’s adherence to environmentally friendly building requirements. Barnard has mandated that all future buildings meet LEED certification standards.
Still, Menten-Weil believes the school has a long way to go to reach an ideal level of sustainability, in part because of the lack of substantial funding. EcoReps only gets enough money to support its first-year initiatives with freshman. Menten-Weil also says it has been tough to convince everyone to pitch in.
“Some students just don’t care,” Menten-Weil said, “so you always end up with a lot of things that don’t get recycled that should. It’s hard to combat.”
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