Sound Off! - with Fran Webber

 

From the perspective of some, William Jewell’s sustainable initiatives are among those that affect very few outside of our insular college community. Our recycling, composting and water, energy and waste-reduction measures save money as well as valuable resources, but even if every student, staff, and faculty member were to do their part to make the Jewell community sustainable, what contribution can this possibly make towards alleviating the global environmental crisis our modern world faces? We are not a large community, and, moreover, the strides we have taken in the past few years, though significant, are not in any sense radical.

Some students seem to have the impression that those of us pushing for a more sustainable campus do so because we would like to see a William Jewell with solar panels on the roofs of all its buildings and organic food in the cafeteria. This constitutes a misunderstanding of the aim of our efforts. Sustainability at Jewell is not, and should not be, about changing the College as an isolated institution. Rather, the way I see it, the greening of William Jewell is a sort of exercise in student awareness and education.

This is because educating students about sustainability and instilling within them values of sustainability will have a greater and more significant impact than the implementation of a few green initiatives on the William Jewell campus itself. As students leave the College and become contributing members of their communities, they will take the values and habits they have acquired here at Jewell with them.

As I go about trying to raise awareness and to change habits and engrained ways of thinking, I notice a shocking lack of interest on the part of students. We are, particularly as regards the issues of sustainability, unreflectively floating along in the “Jewell Bubble.” It might be, in part, the fault of those of us who have so far sought to educate about sustainability. We overemphasize the good we have done and the progress we have made, without pointing out the challenges we still face and that we certainly will face once our comforting college bubble pops.

What makes sustainability here at Jewell appear easy, and therefore less significant, is the fact that it seems not to be about the whole world. Your education and your service here is largely about you and your own personal growth. But in the long term, if you do not live what you learn, or if what you have learned is not worth living, everybody loses.

Fran Webber