Yesterday’s staff editorial, “Lead us to greener pastures,” is an incomplete reflection of all of the work the Student Government Association has already done to lead the student body in an environmentally friendly direction.
Our SGA is filled with some of the most experienced green advocates on this campus, including Senior Vice President Joanna Calabrese, Speaker of the Legislature Matt Lyons and Environmental Affairs Liaison Davey Rogner.
Rogner is transforming the dialogue among environmental student groups from one of discussion to one of action with his new Student Sustainability Council. Lyons is the original author of the “green fee” that we fought for and integrated into students’ mandatory fees, after gaining 91 percent of the student body’s support through a referendum two years ago. We are the SGA that turned that 91 percent into action, leading the entire student body to purchase all of our own carbon offsets. The Diamondback actually wrote about this Sept. 19, yet seems to have a short memory in this case.
The carbon offsets we purchased at our most recent meeting account for this years’ use by the SGA, though the new fee does not begin until next year. Rather than wait a year for the fee, the SGA decided to begin early and set an example by purchasing these offsets.
The SGA also led the student body to fund new hybrid shuttle buses, which will offset our carbon footprint by 30 percent per bus. We held our first public hearing ever on this issue, which mobilized other student activists to testify and act for this greener service. The Diamondback wrote about this Sept. 12.
Other SGA achievements and “green” initiatives have included making our meetings paperless, while expanding access to SGA business through use of a projector at meetings, and a completely redesigned a website. The SGA has also been working with the developers of WeBike, a new bike-sharing program, to help bring its product to the campus to give students a greater incentive to ride their bikes rather than drive their cars, which will also reduce our carbon footprint.
The SGA has also been the leader and organizer of mobilizing one of the largest coalitions of student leaders ever assembled to advocate for the Purple Line, which is transit that has the potential to eliminate more than 13,000 cars from the road when it is built. The SGA has put together two events on the campus related to advocating for the Purple Line and educating the student body on its merits.
The staff editorial’s discussion about driving golf carts to mobilize students to the polls on Election Day is irrelevant to our green efforts. Get-out-the-vote efforts require the utmost creativity, and the SGA drove more than 200 students to the polls, which is twice as many students as those who voted in the 2004 Presidential Primary. It was one day of an important service for students, and I stand by it completely.
Members of this SGA have been committed to leading the student body to be more environmentally friendly. Despite all that we’ve done already, we won’t stop in our advocacy and leadership efforts and have several other green initiatives coming up this year.
Jonathan Sachs is the president of the Student Government Association. He can be reached at jjsachs@umd.edu.
