The U improved its sustainability grade this year, but still isn’t an A student.
The campus received an overall B in sustainability, an improvement from last year’s C, but is still not quite excellent, according to a report card that measures university sustainability efforts.
The College Sustainability Report Card, a nonprofit research organization, surveys and rates the 300 colleges and universities with the largest financial resources in the United States and Canada. GreenReportCard.org, which publishes the grades and rankings, is an interactive Web site that allows students and administrators to view and compare their school’s grades with the grades of other schools nationwide.
“(The Report Card encourages universities) to talk to other schools in their region about how they’re addressing sustainability in various areas, share information and learn from one another,” said Lisa Chase, a spokeswoman for the Sustainable Endowments Institute, which manages the report card.
The U received an A and ranked among the top universities in the new transportation category, but the summary of the U’s activity included in the report card is not completely accurate. The report card stated that the U provides free public transit passes to its student body. U students, however, pay for the UTA Ed-Passes in the form of a fee every semester. The organization was not available for comment before deadline.
The U also received an A last year in transportation, partially because of the increased use of public transit reported by the U and the proposal of the Campus Master Plan, which included measures to reduce single-occupant car commuting. This year, public transportation seems to be more popular, according to U Commuter Services. Of the 38,000 commuters who come to the U five days a week, approximately 14,000 use public transit as a part of their commute.
The U’s lowest grade was a C in student involvement, while the U’s administration received an A.
Alex Parvaz, the co-founder of Sustainable Environments and Ecological Design and a graduate student in environmental studies, said she was confused as to why student involvement did not receive a higher grade. Parvaz worked with SEED to help bring about the U Office of Sustainability, created last fall, which the report card counted as an asset to the U’s administration. Parvaz thinks the low grade might be a press relations problem.
“(In the beginning) we didn’t do as much advertising. No one knew about SEED,” she said. “It was all word-of-mouth with e-mails to faculty and students telling other students.”
The U’s B is a higher grade than many schools in the Mountain West received, except the University of Colorado, which received an A in 8 of the 9 categories.