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As an institution devoted to bringing state of the art programs, research and technology to campus, Virginia Tech has continually demonstrated its ability to create positive change both locally and globally.
Our environmental awareness programs, in conjunction with student involvement through clubs on campus, have done much to increase student and faculty support for being environmentally conscious.
As a political science major, I constantly hear from professors who are truly concerned about political ideas related to global warming, our responsibility to conserve and the impact we can make on our campus and community. I'm delighted that these educators have decided to use their pulpit in order to further a cause which they obviously hold close to their hearts.
What I can't help wondering, however, is why after immediately hearing of the horrors of global warming, or the reason they didn't have enough handouts for the class (paper conservation), or how America is one of the most wasteful nations, they reach under their desks and take a long sip out of their bottled water.
I'll admit it myself, I love the convenience of grabbing bottle after bottle of easy-to-carry water, but I'm also not the one preaching to others about our need to conserve. It is easy to start initiatives for conservation on campus, and equally easy for a teacher to try to educate a class on limiting wastefulness, but what seems nearly impossible for those same faculty members and administrators to do is follow their own guidelines.
If global warming has nearly been proven, as I hear almost weekly from professors, why aren't they doing their small parts to help prevent its continuation?
Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I find it hard to take these claims seriously when the same person who is teaching me that global warming will cause enormous harm to our children and grand-children are also asking me to print-out and read 20-page research papers on the subject.
Asking students to print out papers on their own does not waste any less paper than printing and handing it out yourself (in fact, it most likely is more wasteful considering the printers at Virginia Tech are more efficient than our individual ones).
While I am on the subject of those who preach about ways to save the planet, should students take the initiative to discover the kinds of cars or SUVs are being driven by administrators or professors?
Should a proponent's verbal endorsement for significant social change be measured against that proponent's actual personal and professional sacrifices? Do they moderate the heat and air conditioning in their homes and cars?
Do they wonder how much energy a hair dryer burns while they are getting ready to teach their class in the morning?
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All letters to the editor must include a name, e-mail, daytime phone number and affiliation to Virginia Tech. Affiliation includes: year and major for students; position and department for faculty and staff; current city for alumni and parents.
There's a can/bottle recycling dumpster outside of our dorm, but what I want to see is newspaper/cardboard bins on the residential side of campus, not just on the academic side. I don't want to walk all the way to McBryde to empty my month's worth of the Collegiate Times. I don't want to walk beyond Hillcrest just to recycle the mailed box my parents' care-package came in. There are recycling bins around campus, but it seems like I have to hold a scavenger hunt to find the right bin when I need it.
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Someone told me that VT's trash is sorted to remove recyclable products. i thought this sounded a little odd. Is is true?
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I get the main point of your article: proponents of conservation should practice what they preach. I agree. What I don't get is what bottled water has to do with it. Is drinking bottled spring water somehow more damaging to the environment than tap water? (If anyone can provide evidence that spring water is worse for the environment than tap water, I'll appreciate it.) Yes, it's a little pretentious---and certainly more expensive---to drink bottled spring water, but if that's your biggest piece of evidence that these faculty are hypocrites then you have a weak case. Also, have you considered the idea that maybe they bought the bottle, drank the water in it, and then re-fill it from the tap? I do that all the time because I only had to pay $1 for a bottle I can use over and over (better than a $11 Nalgene). Perhaps these faculty are doing the same.
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What if the knowledge imparted to the students in the lecture leads one of your classmates to develop technology leading to more efficient, convenient recycling, thus saving large amounts of energy and reducing consumer waste? Then I'd say allowing the guy to sip his bottled water was worth it. Too often people focus on the little things while letting the big things slip by. For instance, the Union of Concerned Scientists recently published findings that predict drastically reduced pollution if people change their eating habits, drive more fuel efficient cars, and avoid living in oversized houses that are utility intensive. Things like drinking out of plastic bottles are so many orders of magnitude lower in importance that they seem almost not worth talking about.
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VT is not state-of-the-art. Just look at the 4-16 massacre. VT had the time (2.5 hours) and "technology" to alert the campus of murders in the dorm & a killer-at-large, but Pres $teger chose not to notify. 4-16 was the prelude to the VT $1 Billion fund-raiser, & those pesky dorm murders might interfere w festivities. This is also about failure of leadership. Failure of leadership trumps technology & recycling. Go Hokies.
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Debster, prior to 4/16, how many other schools would have been prepared to handle the situation any better than VT? I know for a fact that Florida State scurried to implement a siren system and text message/email alert system after the fact. I'm sure many other schools were in the same position. I'm not offering excuses, but please realize that state-of-the-art doesn't always equal perfect.
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Speaking of the Collegiate Times, has anyone ever considered how much trash is created *daily* by the CT? Why not reduce the number of CTs printed, and push the on-line CT more?
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