It’s Getting Hot In Here

Students are adding small fees onto their tuition to make a big impact on the environment.

By Tristan Fowler
December 5, 2008

Wind turbines in Wasco, Oregon (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

All those environmental studies majors out there should consider getting a minor in accounting or financing, because the future of “Going Green” has become a numbers game. The upfront costs of energy efficient renovations, LEED-certified buildings, and renewable energy credits can be encumbering to the campus sustainability coordinators and staggering to students in the local environmental club. Late last month, Alfred State College installed a 5.1 kilowatt photovoltaic grid intertie system. It cost $45,000. The University of Saskatchewan is replacing 26,000 light fixtures with energy-efficient bulbs at a cost of $1.9 million over three years. So what can a recession-era institution with Ramen noodle-eating students do? Just follow the example of over 25 campuses that are barely raising their tuition rates, and reaping huge benefits.

Rachel Barge, a 2008 grad from University of California–Berkley, has started a consulting non-profit, Campus InPower, which provides large-scale funding strategies and resources for college students. During her undergrad at University of California Berkley, Barge helped run a successful green fee campaign, raising the tuition by $5 per student. The minor fees added up to between $170,000 and $200,000 each year for sustainable projects. A committee of students, faculty and administrators decide how to best use the funds. The funding has paid for educational programming, created a native plant nursery, and built a campus-wide resource monitoring system.

Continue reading ‘Crunching the Numbers’

It’s hard times in higher ed - with our universities’ budgets getting slashed, administrators are in hyper hunker-down mode in terms of campus spending. More and more student organizers are turning to new, innovative funding sources to implement the vital campus sustainability initiatives we need. Campus InPower is here to help!

This post is a quick shout out for two new resource pages on the www.campusinpower.org site - they’re for students working to establish Green Fees or Revolving Loan Funds. If you know campuses that are working on either of these initiatives, please send them this info. We also offer direct consulting for campaigns; email rachel@campusinpower.org to get in touch!

On the new resource pages, here’s what we got:

The Green Fees Page:

• Sample Bylaws (…save yourself the pain of writing a 7-page legal doc!)
• Campaign Timeline and Guide (post election day = party)
  
• Volunteer Training Guide (train your volunteers to answer the tough questions… and not break campaign rules)
• Sample Flyers (because making flyers is hard)

The Revolving Loan Fund Page:

• RLF Overview (…what the heck is a RLF anyways?)
• Payback Guide (kind of like Mel Gibson… for energy financing)
• Macalester’s Clean Energy Revolving Fund guide (because we <3 Timothy Denherder-Thomas, aka TDT)

Continue reading ‘New Green Fee, Loan Fund Resources - Scope It!’

Busta Rhymes laid it out when he rapped, “It’s all about the money, baby”. Whether it’s clean energy purchasing, an awesome bike-share program, comprehensive composting, water conservation, student sustainability internships and more, these projects all need seed funding to get going. That’s where Campus InPower comes in.

Campus InPower is a national training program that gives student organizers the tools to create revolving loan funds, green fee campaigns, and other funding mechanisms to pay for large-scale sustainability projects on their campuses. Check out the website at www.campusinpower.org. I’m Rachel Barge - I created the program, and here’s what Campus InPower has to offer:

1. “Raise The Funds” Action Toolkit – brand-spanking-new funding guide for student organizers, co-published with AASHE. In its glorious 54 pages, it features SEVEN funding mechanisms to pay for wide-scale sustainability projects or create large, dedicated sustainability funds on campus. It is free to download at www.campusinpower.org

2. Trainings, Workshops, Speaking – as Director of Campus InPower, I am traveling the country, speaking at sustainability conferences and visiting schools. I have a travel budget, so I can visit any interested school and offer a unique training to their environmental group, student body, staff committee, etc on how they can leverage funds on their campus.

3. Strategy Consulting – I am available as a consultant, advocate and supporter to any group of students or staff who are working to establish a sustainability fund on their campus. That includes campaigns that are already underway, or plans that are still on the drawing board. I arrange conference calls, help perform research, and make personal visits to help advise campaigns.

It’s Getting Hot In Here community: I need YOUR help! I want campuses across the country to know that this resource exists for them to tap into. Please pass this info along to your campus community, alma matter, or friends at other schools who might be interested. Send them to www.campusinpower.org or have them email me at rachel@campusinpower.org With your support, we can help make the existing awesome organizing on campuses even more financiall powerful!

Continue reading ‘Green Fees, Revolving Loan Funds and More, Oh My! Meet: Campus InPower’

“No more pollution…or ocean dumpage. FROM NOW ON WE WILL TRAVEL IN TUBES” -Jack Black

Jack Black, the modern-day musical genius, once said in response to criticism of his music, “I’m tired of all this nay-saying! Why don’t YOU create something!?” This mantra could be perfectly applied to the global energy economy.

Why aren’t we going full force to create some awesome, renewable, scalable solutions rather than blaming democrats for high gas prices, calling for more offshore oil drilling (hello!?), or whining about our ever-increasing emissions? It seems like we’re spending more time naysaying than pioneering the energy solutions we need to solve the energy/climate crisis.

Thankfully there is a growing light at the end of the oil-economy tunnel – and I needn’t look further than an article by Andrew Leonard in this week’s Salon to see it. Continue reading ‘Jack Black: Clean Energy Hero’

I struggle to understand the attraction that street theater, as an organizing strategy, has for some environmentalists. And for clarity, I define street theater in the environmental organizing context to include any form of direct action protest that involves costumes and props; giant walking globes, crying human polar bears, hippies on stilts, etc.

Sure, it’s really fun to dress up in costumes. Lord knows I relish Halloween critical mass in SF, or the chance for an 80’s hairspray spandex party with friends. But I don’t pretend to believe that wearing crazy costumes will help me convince anyone of anything, especially something so critical and polarizing as climate change. Continue reading ‘Save the Polar Bear Suits for the Afterparty’