There was a time when being green either meant you were inexperienced, from a different planet, eaten up with envy, or about to puke.
Times have changed. Today these negative connotations have been swallowed up by the green overgrowth of environmentalism. News broadcasters and Quad-chalkers use the term and all of us are supposed to buy in, fall in line, and trill our allegiance – often without full disclosure.
But after all, it’s so fresh, so clean, so GREEN to join! The genius in using such an ambiguous term is that it makes it fairly impossible to debate whether something is green or not.
Take the current Sustainable Campus Environment Fee. We’re told that it’s green, that it’s for sustainability, but we’re not even told what “it” is! Evidently, once the $14/per student is raked in (yes, I am looking for those agricultural terms), the campus will decide what to do with it. We should rest assured that it will, in fact be green.
Somehow, I think that taking this at face value would, indeed, prove our greenness (i.e. Merriam-Webster “green” definition 9a: “inexperience”). As any experienced shopper knows, details first, greenbacks later. If the Student Sustainability Committee can’t manage to describe the specifics of what the funds will be used for now, we have nothing to hold the committee accountable to later. I would describe this as one giant slush fund, but that doesn’t seem green enough. Let’s call it a swamp fund.
Here at UIUC it’s standard for even an RSO to itemize its financial needs, justifying its claim that it needs the money and detailing its anticipated use. Is it asking too much for this green initiative to at least live up to this standard?
Yes, I’m seeing red instead of green, but let me tell you why. A blank check for $14 may not seem like much (two Subway footlongs and a Coke), but think of the total amount this initiative represents. Our university website reports that there’s currently 31,173 undergrads and 10,322 graduate and professional students traipsing about the greening Quad. If all 41,495 students paid the $14 fee, that would amount to a total of $580,930 – over half a million dollars. And this is going to what? TBD.
So far, the only proven greenness of the measure is that it requires a substantial transfer of green from the private to the public sector. I say, make it opt-in. Give us the opportunity to prove our greenness, voluntarily.