Sustaining Us

If sustainability is to catch on, it must be taught, and where better than America’s colleges. Packed with liberal attitudes toward social progress, educational institutions have the support and momentum to propel the movement forward. The Sustainable Endowments Institute produces college report cards that reflect a sustainable momentum. Measuring the operational measures taken in sync with endowment practices is a two pronged measurement technique. Operational measures determine at what level a university already employs better practices, and the study of each university’s endowments approach, is intended to judge how the university earmarks funding for continued sustainable progress. Each school’s report card can be seen here.

At their disposal, educational institutions have an immense cache of goodwill that can propel the greening of tomorrow’s landscape. Take my alma mater for example. Penn State has some of the country’s leading climate scientists. Under a new policy, all new-building and major renovation projects require LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, further establishing a sustainable trend in central Pennsylvania’s appropriately names “Happy Valley.” The personnel and policies are in place to utilize the best resources any institution has, its students.

America’s Generation Y, happens to be idealistic and driven. Thomas Friedman, a prominent editorial journalist for the New York Times, compiled a mini-profile of us as he toured schools in the south. What he found was that we have positive emotions about our ability to effect change and we tend to act on our idealist convictions, however we are painfully silent on political issues that directly affect us, dubbing us Generation Q, for quiet. He cites examples such as our brazen approach to foreign volunteer work and travel in the years following September 11th, but we are absent in the political debates about global warming, social security, and other longer-term concerns. Does Generation Y have the old saying backwards, do we act to often and talk too little?

Thomas Friedman attacks our generation’s highly fractured and organic communication channels and there’s the rub. Thomas Friedman’s generation, our parents, and those who currently hold office, need to be told explicitly and audibly what our concerns are…let’s call them conventional communicators. Generation Y prefers the viral communication style, via electronic medium, and let’s call ourselves “new age communicators.” There’s a disconnect.

Universities are the perfect place to bridge the gap between conventional communicators and new age communicators. Professors’ interact with students in a free exchanges of ideas unparalleled in society. The next challenge is to have our professors encourage vocal activism regarding our deep convictions. We’ve all heard that small individual changes make a big difference, but who’s to say there’s no room for the Big Splash in politics. The 1960’s and 1970’s saw our activist, peace-loving, parents grow from the highly political fields of Woodstock into the self-assured and powerful Baby Boom Generation. We are independent and proud, but not vocal. Our baby boom parents instilled a sense of uniqueness in us and it may be that very uniqueness that holds us back from embracing and speaking up for the issues that will affect all of us.

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