Page 595 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

562 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

FIGURE 29.1 Ohio Wesleyan Campus, Delaware Ohio. Photo Credit: OWU, Office of
Communications.

is no official sustainability plan and there are neither funds nor donations set
aside specifically for sustainability projects. OWU has, over the last decade,
expanded its endowment, raised significant funds for student travel and
research, and embarked on a substantial upgrade to campus student housing.
These are all fundamentally important and easily justifiable priorities. Given
this situation, it is easy for students, faculty, and staff to feel like not enough is
being done to foster sustainability on campus. Instead of complaining about
the lack of top-down, large-investment sustainability, a group of students,
faculty, and staff have embarked on a grassroots effort to make sustainability
work at OWU despite limited resources. Ultimately, we argue, sustainability
efforts can succeed if those who believe in the value of sustainability actually
do something, then persist in furthering the efforts until something takes hold,
and then persist in keeping the efforts going. Successes with these smaller,
“scrappy” efforts will, hopefully, lead to larger efforts, backed by a spreading
culture of sustainability.
OWU has a rocky history with sustainability efforts. Many higher educa-
tion institutions believe that they must be leaders in finding solutions to the
environmental crisis by developing and promoting the knowledge, tools, and
technologies needed to transition to a sustainable society. As the environ-
mental movement emerged and developed in the 1960s and the 1970s, OWU
established an Environmental Studies major, the first such program in an
academic institution in Ohio. In its nearly 40-year existence, the program has
produced hundreds of majors that have gone on to successful careers related to
the environment. In 2009, a Sustainability Task Force was created to evaluate
the President’s Climate Commitment (PCC), which 80% of students voted to
support. Despite the lack of any direct negative consequences for not meeting
the PCC goals, the Task Force was concerned about the capital investments