15 CommentsGrades are in early, because The College Sustainability Report Card is out! From their press release:
Released today, the publication is the only independent evaluation of sustainability in campus operations and endowment practices. Assessing each institution in nine categories, ranging from Climate Change & Energy to Green Building to Investment Priorities, the Report Card provides detailed school profiles and grades for 322 colleges and universities, representing all 50 U.S. states and eight Canadian provinces.
Since the first edition four years ago, Report Card surveys show dramatic increases on 52 green indicators. For example, the percentages of schools that now have the following programs are:
64% – Commitment to carbon emissions reduction (23% in 2006)
70% – Campus farm or garden (9% in 2006)
75% – Trayless dining (0% in 2006)
79% – Green building policy (22% in 2006)
95% – Sustainability committee (40% in 2006)
Cool stuff. Columbia earned a B+, and Barnard earned a C+. Check out your school’s grades and then yell at your council members!
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15 Comments
@Anonymous I went to college in California before coming to Columbia, and that campus in 06′ was light years ahead of today’s Columbia Campus. Instead of practicing actual sustainable models that individuals need to practice and live by at Columbia, they teach us how to trade carbon stock, which I’m pretty sure is some sort of variation of a 21st century ponzi scheme using the face of global warming to make a different group of people even richer. These global warming elites have a public face saying that they care, but in reality they are living beyond their natural resource means like everyone else. While they live with private jets, luxury mansions and limousines, they are out there preaching to me that I need to live in a certain type of box and drive a certain type of car, and live a certain way of life. Give me a break.
@omg you’re like so awesome because you’re a california tree hugger
A) global warming is a myth
B) Cap and trade is an awful idea
c) before spewing your liberal garbage and pretending you know what your talking about, do some research
@Anonymous A) I agree that it is a myth and a front for people like Al Gore to get rich and Soros to enslave the human race.
B) Cap and trade is retarded and so is the idea of trading carbon stock.
C) I don’t like conservative or liberal elites telling me how to live, but I like looking at trees rather than smoke stacks, nor is there any point in doing research because the notion that man can control nature on a global macro level is just dumb. How is it even quantifiably possible to accurately portray global warming when the margin of error could mean we are at doomsday already or we are only 1/1000000000 of 1% on our way to doomsday. It’s just dumb. I’m not set out to save the planet nor think man can save it, I just think good conservation habits should be practiced by all and enforced by nobody, who do you really hurt by trying to do more with less.
You sir, read to far into things, you got to get out of the city sometime to get some fresh air
@Brenden C. Columbia also has the worst grade in the Ivy League (again) and is the only Ivy school or New York City school (besides NYU) not to respond to the surveys.
Check out other urban schools’ grade details if you want to be blown away by how far behind Columbia is. While Columbia “aims” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, NYU has already achieved reductions of 20%, Fordham of 23%, The New School of 20%…
For more info:
Yesterday’s Spec article:: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/10/26/columbia-finds-new-way-track-its-green-efforts
Shameless plug for op-ed making the case that Columbia deserves its poor sustainability grade: http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2010/09/07/columbia-aces-academics-drops-sustainability-101-2010-09-08
@Anonymous this is a worthless. Living in a big city best for the environment. There is no way that we put off more CO2 per person compared to Yale.
We probably have a really low CO2 per student rating. But they don’t use that metric.
But their logic it would be best if we all went to huge state schools in the middle of no where that would have to truck in all of the resources and food from hundreds of miles away. The fact that we can piggy back off of the public systems of New York is great.
im incoherent. midterms suck.
@CC '05 Might be relevant to mention we’re the lowest of the Ivies…
@Anonymous Barnard got a D for transportation?
Maybe we need more shuttles to help us cross our four-acre campus …
@Bwepressed what’s the point?
@point is Columbia passes Barnard fails more physical proof of our superiorityv
@Anonymous For both: “This school did not respond to any of the three administrator surveys.”
Uh, yeah… you know what they say, garbage in, garbage out.
And for Barnard: “While a student group has completed the student survey for the College Sustainability Report Card 2011, they have requested that their full response not be published. Please contact the school directly if you have specific questions about their sustainability programs.”
WTF???
@response The reason that the schools did not respond is that there is contention over the transparency of the grading process — whether there are shady incentives to give better grades, is perhaps part of this, but it is mostly about knowing how the grading rubric can apply to both urban and rural campuses — so it was about the principle.
Go jump in some leaves, not to conclusions
@... Check out your editor’s grades and then yell at how they consistently misspell shit on this site. “Council” has an “n.” Doesn’t the squiggly line under “coucil” give you a hint? It can’t even be confused with any word in the English language.
@Eliza Alas, we don’t get squiggly lines. Sometimes there are typos on this website and we try to correct them as soon as possible. We have to take midterms, too. It’s fixed now.
@... Damn, midterms…
@seriously get a life