The last few years have wrought many changes for the UW-Oshkosh campus environment. Recently we have become one of the first “fair-trade” universities in the nation, and in the not-so-distant future a new academic building is touted as being a sustainable, environmentally-friendly building.
According to the National Association of Scholars, “on many campuses sustainability is marketed to students as saving energy and improving the environment, but turns out to involve projects that have nothing to do with the environment.” Several of their theses of a recent article by them titled, “10 Reasons to Oppose the Sustainability Movement on Your Campus,” set out to challenge the political undertones of sustainability programs.
Much of what this comes down to is the imposition of a certain brand of politics on students, faculty and staff, regardless of its social acceptance.
One of the more reaching allegations of the NAS is that, “sustainability advocates don’t want to just add sustainability to the curriculum; they want to make it ‘the foundation of all learning and practice in higher education.’” And while sustainability modules may be impossible or laughable for such courses as Sanskrit, experimental literature or ROTC training, the idea that an ideology enters any classroom unexamined is something students should be concerned about.
As students, we have the first and foremost duty to educate ourselves for the future. Our goal should first be to learn something about the world before attempting to change it in ways we may not fully understand.
Perhaps the most salient notion of the NAS is that “wasteful expenditures and diversion of human time and talent” can and do occur. At Oshkosh, our past sustainability director search occupied months at a time, and finally hired Almut Beringer. Six months later, she left to do research.
Likewise, one must wonder how much time Integrated Marketing has spent recasting UW-Oshkosh’s image into a green university, as one aspect of sustainability, especially to become the first fair-trade university? So, now that we’re working towards being sustainable, fair-trade, etc., has there been a measurable effect of benefit? We know budget cutbacks have been measurable and negative; where lies sustainability?
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