Three Boston University professors, citing a lack of on-campus environmental sustainability awareness, have sent a letter to President Robert Brown and started an online petition asking for more attention to the issue.
The authors — geography and environmental department chairman Mark Friedl, biology professor Thomas Kunz and earth sciences professor Richard Murray — drafted the petition, which includes an open letter to the BU community, in response to Brown’s Strategic Planning Task Force report, released earlier this academic school year, which did not mention environmental initiatives.
The letter, titled “Environmental Sustainability: A Challenge to the Boston University Community” was made available online Tuesday, and as of last night had received 189 signatures.
“In the broadest picture, this is what universities are supposed to do,” Friedl said in an interview. “They are supposed to tackle big problems that other public and private entities are not willing to take up. It is the role of the university in society to take up these grand challenges.”
A copy of the letter was directly sent to Brown on Tuesday. Kunz said the petition criticizes the report, not Brown. As of last night, Murray said Brown had not contacted him in response.
“I assume they read it,” Murray said. “[Brown and Provost David Campbell] are busy guys. There’s no problem whatsoever [with the lack of response] from our perspective.”
The BU Strategic Planning Task Force’s report, entitled “One BU” and released Oct. 1, 2006, presents the university’s strengths and weaknesses while calling on some university programs and departments to improve.
“I don’t think there was a conscious decision to omit [environmental sustainability],” Friedl said. “I just think partly, the composition of the Task Force didn’t include individuals who were particularly interested in this topical area. On some level, it was not entirely representative of a significant subpopulation of the university that feels strongly about these topics.”
Yesterday afternoon, one day after the petition was available online, 180 faculty, staff, alumni, graduate and undergraduate students had signed it.
“This is a key opportunity for BU,” Murray said. “It is very clear this is tapping into a broad feeling on campus that these are issues we need to be addressing.”
The professors’ goal in issuing the open letter is to inform the public they are not alone in their concerns regarding BU’s environmental sustainability, Murray said. The professors also expect to generate discussion and to influence the Strategic Plan.
“BU not only has the resources, but also the obligation to confront the grand challenges confronting society,” the letter states. “We believe that failure to do so will contribute to a weakened position in the global educational community and loss of prestige and support from alumni and corporate leaders.”
After the Task Force publicly released its report, Brown invited faculty and students to share input on the matters the Task Force discussed.
“President Brown, in a very refreshing fashion, has given the university community an opportunity to basically have a voice — that’s the big thing,” Friedl said. “We are just trying to add our voice to this process.”
The circulated letter does not include solutions to environmental problems BU faces, but rather allows a medium to initiate discussions, Friedl said.
“If there does seem to be broad support . . . then the next step is to think about mechanisms of how we might implement initiatives to enhance the teaching, research and operational dimensions of the university that pertain to sustainability,” he said.
Kunz said the university should address the operational aspect of the issue to make BU more environment-friendly. This will impact academics and encourage more research.
“We don’t have all the answers,” Kunz said. “But, when there are more people thinking about this, we get more possible solutions.
“Operational things in a small scale could add up in the long run,” he continued. “It’s a global issue, but we have to improve our own, improve what is going on in the university.”
Kunz suggested improving the BU’s recycling programs, installing energy-efficient light bulbs and conserving buildings’ heat.
“The university is a huge entity that consumes tremendous amounts of resources,” Friedl said. “I think there is a large number of things the university could be doing fairly cost-effectively . . . in terms of just reducing consumption of resources.”
Brown did not immediately respond to emails from The Daily Free Press.