Campus Environmental Advisory Committee

Meeting Notes for 2008/10/02

Attendees:

  • Ngondizashe Munemo
  • Keith Butts
  • Sarah Gardner
  • Jen Rowe
  • Chris Warren
  • Amy Johns
  • Molly Guest
  • Ken Jenson
  • Stephanie Boyd

Next meeting is Thurs, Oct 23. Stephen Klass will be there to talk with us about building policy. This week we’re reviewing the building policy in preparation for next week.

Sub-Committee Reports

Transport

  • not met yet
  • BRTA is doing surveys, we (Williams) are responding
  • there is work on analyzing the feasibility of the bike sharing project
  • there’s a bike project committee outside of CEAC – this sub-committee should talk to them

Also during this discussion it came up that some students from past years are confused about whether or not they’re still on CEAC (though none have shown up so far even though the meetings are open), and also that at least one student who did a self-nom for CEAC to College Council has heard nothing back from them.

Outreach

  • met and chose two initiatives to pursue
    • disposition and management of the Class of 2008 gift
    • establishment of an employee recognition program
  • this committee wants more students!

Big Picture

  • structure of sub-committees based around themes (outreach, transportation) rather than projects is good
    • sub-committees persist across years
    • sub-committees choose particular projects in their realm
  • discussed some ideas for other sub-committees if we have the resources and interested in such: Waste Management, Building and Construction, Energy and Emissions, Follow the Money, and Policies
  • smaller projects (e.g. decision to get digital signs) need oversight / input as well as the big projects
  • we should come up with a history and state-of-the-moment reports on the wind power at/for Williams, specifically the Berlin wind project
    • this project is a good long term student project
  • open question: what is the role of CEAC
    • w.r.t. Zilkha?
    • w.r.t. TNG
  • consider approaching carbon as we do money
    • annual budget
    • we already do detailed money accounting (though that certainly has its own issues)
    • perhaps carbon tracking belongs in the college accounting offices…?

Building Policy Discussion

John presented the building policy created last year, and re-wording to make it clearer. The reaction from many people was that the policy was not strong/aggressive enough. Various discussion on what it should be. There seemed to be general agreement that all construction / renovation projects would at worst leave carbon emissions unchanged, and at best actually reduce them. There was lots of disagreement about the best way to word that so as to avoid internal emissions trading. Also mentioned was that there is already a project to reduce emissions via various renovation projects, so we want to avoid letting people use those reductions to build other things.

John took suggestions and will come up with something.

This scribe, though guilty himself of contributing to the problem, thinks that in the future we should avoid writing by committee