In a recent letter to the editor, a student complained about the practice of watering the lawns on campus. She first cited several “green” attempts which have been made thus far, such as “Trayless Tuesdays,” which is currently generating a lot of complaints (someone has even started a Facebook group to protest it).

She went on to praise our new biodegradable corn cups, which contrary to the writer’s opinion, do not come courtesy of dining services, but instead come courtesy of students’ wallets in the form of meal plan and food price hikes. The next green step for us take, according to her, is to eliminate lawn watering.

What bothered me most in this letter was when the author said, “Watering campus grounds is simply another selfish act of American ignorance.”

Is this really true? Are we wrong to take good care of our university vegetation? I think that this claim is absolutely ridiculous. The last time I checked, green people were the ones planting the trees and flowers, not the ones trying to let them dry up and die. If I were to plant a tree for Arbor Day, would it really be wasteful of me to water it? This is simply another case of radical environmental ignorance.

I am sure no university administrator in his or her right mind would consider this student’s idea, but just in case, I have compiled a list of other “green” initiatives we could also adopt to help us ease our conscience about the University’s negative environmental impact:

– Eliminate all lawn mowing and snowplowing in the interest of saving gas. Taking care of the campus is, of course, selfish.

– Disable all campus air conditioning units. Our discomfort in class would be a small price to pay for the obvious benefits to the environment.

– Create a “green” dorm with no electricity, hot water heaters, or showers. After all, there should be hundreds of students willing to part with these amenities in order to save the planet.

This list is meant to be comical, but I guarantee that someday someone will want to consider implementing these ideas. The truth is that there are so many other steps we can take to conserve energy without inconveniencing students or raising the cost of living unnecessarily.

For instance, the heating unit in my dorm is on far too often throughout the cooler months, and without a way to regulate it, I am forced to leave my windows open in January just to cool the room to a livable temperature. This is an actual problem of waste that has some simple solutions, such as individual room thermostats.

I think that if we apply some common sense to these issues, we can be good caretakers of the environment without turning the grass brown, giving up cafeteria trays, or paying 50 cents for a cup of tap water.

Jacob Kampen
sophomore
business finance major
student senator