Spring 2009 Stories

When we think of sustainability on campus we often think of recycling, solar panels, gray water sprinkler systems— material transformations and measurable commitments. By these standards, Santa Clara University is creating for itself a success story. However, what remains unclear is the state of the human climate on campus—the extent to which sustainability has become part of campus culture and an internalized value in the beliefs and actions of Santa Clara University students, faculty, and staff.

Recently named one of the top twenty five College Sustainability Leaders by the College Sustainability Report Card,¹ the only independent campus sustainability evaluation in the country, Santa Clara University and its administration have clearly made a strong commitment to sustainability. With top scores in the categories of Administration, Climate Change and Energy, and Food and Recycling, there are reasons to celebrate. Though the College Sustainability Report Card does include a category called “Student Involvement,” (in which SCU scored a letter grade B), the results evaluate only programs, clubs, and events available to students. Though student sustainability programs are indicators of student interest, I still felt something lacking in even this progressive measurement of campus sustainability.

“What makes a university campus sustainable?” I asked myself in the fall of 2007 as I prepared to conduct a year of research as an undergraduate fellow in environmental ethics through the Markkula Center of Applied Ethics.² Sure, campus sustainability includes energy use, food choice, and water systems—all the traditional indicators large institutions have addressed when minimizing carbon footprints. But should university sustainability be held to a different standard? What is an institution of higher education if not an amalgam of ideas centralized in one location? If not the aggregate body of thinkers, of students, faculty, and staff who move through its doors each year? And what is a Jesuit institution of higher education if not a project in molding leaders who live and lead by their values? What would we find if we were to measure the sustainability of the living institution, if we were to analyze the extent to which students, faculty, and staff internalize sustainability in their beliefs and actions, and the likelihood that they will carry those beliefs forward in their lives after they leave the University?

This new definition of campus sustainability—sustainability as a value necessarily embodied in the hearts and minds of the campus community—drove my research on the culture of sustainability at Santa Clara University.³ By focusing primarily on how students understand, define, and express environmental values, I was able to elicit in-depth interview responses from nearly 60 diverse undergraduate students and a variety of staff and faculty members. What follows is a discussion of this experience, and a rough but meaningful image of sustainability “on the ground,” as evidenced by significant discourses and personal narratives of decision-making, lifestyle choices, and sustainable behaviors.

Environmental Ethics in Action

With few exceptions, environmental ethics among Santa Clara students are ethics of practicality, ethics of daily utility that appear to fall on a spectrum ranging from those who ask, “How can I do the least environmental harm with minimal inconvenience?” to those who ask, “How can I do the most environmental good within the constraints of today’s society?”

Students at the first end of the spectrum generally believe that people should act sustainably as long as it does not unreasonably encroach on their lifestyle or livelihood. They stick to small-scale adjustments of daily habits—perhaps they recycle or turn the lights off when not in use, but tend to rate a concern for the environment low on the list of their daily concerns.

“Tell me about the last time you made a decision with potential effects on the environment?” “What was the last time you had an experience or conversation in which the topic of sustainability or the environment arose?” During each interview I asked such questions to prompt story-telling and personal narratives about the environment and sustainability in an effort to understand specifically how students relate to the abstract concept of sustainability. The responses? Recycling. The vast majority of students talked about walking a few extra feet to a recycling bin, or about programs promoting recycling they had seen around campus, or about selling their aluminum cans for cash.

One group interview clearly illustrated the dominance of the recycling discourse in campus sustainability. A student had commented, “A lot of people, when they think about sustainability, just think about recycling. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.” In the pause that followed, I braced myself for a breakthrough, but the group simply nodded and then resumed discussing examples of recycling. Why was recycling so preponderant in almost all interviews I conducted? Is recycling attractive because it is the easiest thing to do? Or is it one of the only sustainable behaviors with which students are familiar? For answers, I turned to students at the other end of the environmental ethics spectrum.

I spoke with students more deeply involved in sustainability on campus, students who place sustainability at the top of their ethical priorities. As members of student environmental clubs, sustainability-oriented dorms, or environmental studies classes, these individuals tend to involve themselves in the types of student organizations measured by the College Sustainability Report Card. They place sustainability high on their ethical priorities and tend to rely on a set of values that asks, “How can I effect the most positive environmental change under current social conditions?”

When I posed the question, “Can you give me an example of a situation in which you made a decision with potential impacts on the environment?” one student shot back, “Can you rephrase the question? Because my understanding is that every second of every day we are affecting the environment.” These students discussed responsible consumerism, green marketing, greenwashing, sustainable lifestyles, and culture change as necessary steps to create a more sustainable society. One student criticized current programming, saying, “We limit the conversation to shallow examples of sustainability…the talks should encompass more than current conversations do. If anything we need to expand on the discourse as opposed to creating a top ten list of sustainability.”

Fair enough. These research findings may seem relatively straightforward. Some students are willing to place environmental ethics higher on their list of daily concerns than others. Surely many of us can identify someone we know on either side of this spectrum. Maybe we see ourselves in these examples. However, as I continued interviewing, I became increasingly suspicious that there may be very little, if any, middle ground between the “recyclers” and the “sustainabilists,” suggesting two distinct camps of environmental thinkers. Is sustainability really “all or nothing”? As I began to investigate this further I realized that the sharp division between sustainable insiders and outsiders extended far beyond environmental ethics and was reflected even in basic understandings of sustainability.

I took to the streets with renewed focus on one of my original questions, “How do students define and understand the concept of sustainability?” My questions were overwhelmingly met with long periods of silence as informants squirmed in their chairs, asked for the next question, or simply drew a blank. Surprised by this near-universal reaction, I wondered how the same students could voice ethical concerns for the environment and yet be so confused about the basic meaning of sustainability. Is it possible that they have been exposed to so much “sustainability talk” that they have accepted its validity without fully understanding what the concept of sustainability means or asks of us? Is this why they are unable to name any sustainable action other than recycling?

Amidst this sea of confusion is a small group of students involved in environmental programming on campus, who reflected upon this phenomenon. “A lot of these words [sustainability, environmentally friendly] are thrown around like buzz words. There’s a lot of talk about sustainability on this campus, but it’s often misconstrued as to what the word even means.” Campus sustainability efforts by students for students have tended to focus on awareness-raising of the importance of sustainability—the basic hypothesis being that all people need is more information and then they will care, then they will act. My conversations suggest that the awareness is there, the tools are not. Perhaps campus sustainability has moved past the era of awareness-raising. Could we be hurting ourselves, limiting our progress by “getting the word out”?

If we want to create truly sustainable campuses, it is going to take a culture of sustainability that extends past a small group of committed individuals, and a commitment that extends past graduation. How? I believe that it is time to complicate the message, time to focus on capacity-building, time to move from the “why” to the “how” in open discussions that bring all players to the table. It is time to move past the buzzword and into the complex nitty-gritty discussion of what sustainability can mean, and what, specifically, we can do. This is not a time for discouragement; this is the fun part.

Endnotes

1 College Sustainability Report Card, The Sustainability Endowments Institute, http://www.endowmentinstitute.org/sustainability. This is the first website to provide in-depth sustainability profiles for hundreds of colleges in all 50 U.S. states and Canada.

2 Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, http://www.scu.edu/ethics/. This website is a forum for research and discussion in all areas of applied ethics at Santa Clara University.

3 For a complete discussion of this research, see “Environmental Ethics and the Culture of Sustainability at Santa Clara University” which can be found at http://www.scu.edu/ethics.articles/articles.cfm?fam=enviro.