By Meghan Mooney, Spring 2008
ABSTRACT: Though Santa Clara University has made a strong commitment to sustainability—one that impacts University spending, building, and planning—little information exists on to what extent and in what forms sustainability has become part of the student culture. This anthropological study on the culture of sustainability examines how Santa Clara University students understand, define, and express environmental values as individuals and members of the campus community. Though students almost universally subscribe to a utilitarian ethic that privileges people over the environment, their ethical codes do not show a lack of concern for the environment, merely that they assign sustainability a practical position somewhere amongst their other ethical commitments. While SCU students can easily verbalize why sustainability is important, they are unable to define what sustainability means or how to become more sustainable. Similarly, they have little idea what a person who chooses to live sustainably but is not an "environmentalist" would look like or be called. Most importantly, environmental discourse at Santa Clara University suffers from divisiveness resulting from the mistaken conclusion that people who do not take action simply do not care. Thus, a misguided focus on raising awareness about environmental problems misses the opportunity for both capacity building and more complex discussions about sustainability in which debate and criticism is welcome—the very sort of discussions non-environmental students want.
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