Blue Goes Green funds distributed
Two decisions were made on where a portion of the 2011-2012 Blue Goes Green Fee project funding will go — more water bottle-filling stations and bicycle maintenance stations.
Additional projects selected to receive Blue Goes Green funding will be announced in April.
Brooke Evans, ASUSU Diversity vice president, and Blake Nemelka, a senior majoring in marketing, business administration and international business, designed a project to join with this year’s senior project — helping fund a water fountain, painted Aggie blue, on the Quad.
More water bottle-filling stations will be installed throughout campus as well in the HPER Building, Fieldhouse and Merrill-Cazier Library Nemelka said.
This project received $8,000 from the Blue Goes Green Fee fund, but the project total is projected around $12,000. The additional $4,000 will be raised through this year’s senior project initiative.
Jared Stapp, a senior majoring in environmental studies who is a mechanic at Aggie Blue Bikes, received $1,700 for his project idea to install bike-maintenance stations across campus.
“It’s a bike stand where you can hang your bike up by the seat post,” Stapp said.
The tools you need for most basic bike repairs are tethered to the stand, he said.
The idea for bike maintenance stations stemmed from the University of Utah, where the stations have been extremely successful, said Roslynn Brain, a member of the sustainability council.
Sites on campus have been approved for installment of the stations. One station will be in front of the library and another in front of Aggie Blue Bikes.
“All the infrastructure is there, they just need to get the physical models,” she said.
The Blue Goes Green fee raises about $90,000 per year and is 0.08 percent of student fees, said Kristin Ladd, the campus outreach intern for the Student Sustainability Office.
About $41,000 of the Blue Goes Green Fee pays the salary for full-time coordinator of the Student Sustainability Office, Mark Blaiser. Three student-interns are paid $2,500 each over a year-long period.
Any student from any department can apply to become a student intern, Ladd said.
Ladd said $34,575 goes toward grants for students from any department who applies to work on a sustainability project. The grant application deadline is Feb. 29 at 5 p.m, the Student Sustainability Office will announce the grantees and their projects after Spring Break, she said.
“I don’t feel it’s the right fee or the right course of action for the school,” said Justin Hinh, president of USU Students for Liberty. “Personally, I saw it as a lobbying effort by the (College) of Natural Resources, because who benefits the most from a green fee? The students who are involved in the green movement, and those typically are the … natural resource students.”
Hinh said natural resources majors are the ones who want the change most, and he believes their initiatives should not be paid for by students.
“The grant has always been open to all students,” Ladd said. “There’s a misconception about the Blue Goes Green Fee that it wasn’t (open to all students).”
Students from the psychology, English and business departments have shown interest in the grant, she said. Everyone at USU would benefit from the grantees’ projects, because being at a sustainable college will boost the value of degrees, she said.
A survey about green initiatives was emailed to USU students and drew responses from 2,670 students, Ladd said.
According to survey results, a majority of students use and enjoy the water bottle-filling stations — students said they loved the convenience of the devices, and some even asked if more could be installed, Brain said.
Even though sustainability is a controversial issue throughout the U.S., Brain said the high number of survey responses shows USU’s progressive drive toward eco-friendliness.
The survey was created by members of the Sustainability Council who administered it through the Survey Monkey website to gauge students’ perspectives of sustainability initiatives on campus.
“Even though they were a mix of different responses, I’m just glad that people weren’t apathetic,” Ladd said. “I’d much rather them have an opinion, and that’s great, and we want to know them.”
Brain said she was pleased to see a strong student interest in sustainability and most responses were positive.
“What the Sustainability Office wanted to see was how can they, from the onset, gain support from students and make this a student-driven process,” Brain said.
The other goal of the survey was to determine what factors kept students from living sustainable lives, Brain said.
The survey results state that 45.8 percent of respondents marked cost as the biggest difficulty in sustainable living, and 66.1 percent saw financial incentives as a “very influential” motivation to live more sustainably.
The second-most influential motivator was personal heath, with 50.1 percent of 2,601 respondents marking health as “very influential” and 36.9 percent marking it as “influential.”
“There’s such a great amount of positive responses and very useful feedback,” Brain said.
“(The fee) doesn’t seem like that big of a deal — it’s only $3,” said Scott Marshall, a senior majoring in aviation science.
Zach Card said he disagrees with Marshall and has been against the Blue Goes Green Fee from the beginning. Card, a senior majoring in FCHD, said he thinks the fee is not a wise use of students’ money.
“I can’t think of a bigger waste of student fees than the water fountains,” Card said. “When I heard about the large drinking fountain on the Quad, I felt the same way. I don’t think the drinking fountain on the quad is a horrible idea, but the extra money wasted so people don’t have to tilt their water bottle 45 degrees is ridiculous. Personally, I have no idea what the Blue Goes Green Fee has to do with a drinking fountain.”
Amanda Morgan, a junior majoring in journalism said she supports any campus initiative that aims to improve the quality of the environment.
The fee will move USU in a more modern direction and preserve the beauty of USU’s campus, Ladd said. She wants students to know the fee isn’t a waste of time or money and is used as efficiently as possible, she added.
The survey helped emphasize the importance of managing the fee properly to have the best impact on students, said Sean Damitz, Student Sustainability director. The feedback from the survey will be used in planning for the usage of the fee during the next three to five years, he said.
– marissa.shields@aggiemail.usu.edu
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu