When my classmates and I arrived on campus in the fall of 2005, President Marx told us at Convocation, “Amherst College must be an exemplar of how a community cares for itself, and of how we learn from and treat each other fairly.” It is time to update the model. We need a sustainability office.

The Amherst administration has taken strong measures to enact sustainable practices on campus. The recent fruition of the efforts to create the Environmental Studies major is a testament to this commitment. The Facilities Department has made major efficiency upgrades and sponsored sustainability events. However, this top-down effort is not being met by individual changes. We have made almost no progress in reducing unnecessary consumption because there is no effort to integrate personal sustainability with institutional sustainability.

In addition, a growing number of students are pushing for institutional change, but we’ve encountered “a million hoops” to jump through before finding the right way to pursue a change. This has led to apathy. Many students see the College’s approach as something unapproachable that they cannot change. In order to make environmental sustainability a long-term goal, the College needs a directed way to enact student and department plans, follow up on them, and collaborate across institutional boundaries.

The solution seems clear after a discussion with interested parties. Amherst needs a Sustainability Team to coordinate its initiatives and to liaise between students, administration and various departments. Smith, Mount Holyoke, Tufts, Middlebury, Bates, Bowdoin, Williams and Connecticut College have dedicated sustainability or environmental offices; Colby, Wesleyan and Trinity have committees that meet regularly and employ student interns. These schools eclipse Amherst in working toward sustainability, as evidence of waste reduction shows. I feel that Amherst would be best served by a unified Office of Sustainability Initiatives, which would advise departments, liaise with student groups and collaborate with Facilities.

Amherst’s budget is constrained right now, but there are less-costly ways to move toward this solution. A temporary, one- or two-year postgraduate position (“a Green Green Dean”) could facilitate the formation of a Sustainability Advisory Committee, composed of staff, faculty and students. He or she would prepare departmental plans for sustainability, create a better mechanism for student engagement, increase awareness of existing programs and eventually submit a recommendation for the direction of Amherst’s commitment to sustainability.

Students surely will understand that this plan will face budgetary hurdles. But it needs to be a priority, and we should work to find a budget where it can fit. Amherst cannot reach its sustainability goals via the existing piecemeal approach.

—Jeff Gang ’09

The Green Amherst Project

Note: Please see http://amhpub.amherst.edu/jgang09 for the unabridged text.