Story by Alyssa Williams
Featured Photo courtesy of Tom Smith
The MTSU organization Students for Environmental Action circulated a petition on campus to raise the Sustainable Campus Fee from $8 to $20.
The SCF, which began in 2006, is currently factored into students’ tuition. Its main purpose is to “decrease consumption on the campus of non-renewable energy,” according to MTSU’s website.
The fee is split into two sections. The first is for purchasing green power, energy generated by wind power, solar power or methane gas. This replaces traditional energy sources. The remainder of the fee is spent on campus projects intended to improve campus’s energy efficiency. In the applications for 2023, there are requests for research projects, planting trees, water refill stations and freeze monitor prevention.
Tom Smith is the president of the SEA, and he has looked into the SCF for the past two years.
“There just isn’t enough money there to do all the sustainability projects on campus that are really needed,” Smith said. “It’s really about trying to address that need and making campus environmentally friendly.”
Smith hopes the increase of the SCF will help with the ongoing process of switching outside light bulbs to LEDs. Not only are LED lights more energy efficient, but they also improve student safety.
“That’s been something that maintenance has been doing piece by piece for years now,” Smith said. “It’s quite expensive to upgrade them, but it’s something that needs to happen. It would drastically reduce how much electricity is used on campus.”
He hopes that in addition to funding current projects, the money will also open the door for new ones. Smith said he thinks MTSU needs to catch up to other campuses.
“About 20 years ago when this fee got started, MTSU was a leader in the state, as far as a campus going green because we had a recycling program and we started this fee,” Smith said. “But in that time, about every other major university has a dedicated Office of Sustainability, sustainability committees and produced yearly plans to improve sustainability on campus.”
Smith believes MTSU has a responsibility to improve sustainability, especially in the face of the impending climate crisis.
“This past year, there was a lot of freeze and thaw, which sort of decimated landscaping and caused a lot of damage to campus buildings,” he explained. “It causes real financial damage to the campus that our tuition is having to pay for. Being able to be proactive about that, especially as those kinds of crises become more common in an era of climate change, is huge.”
Raising the fee isn’t enough to increase campus’s sustainability though. Rather, it is an important first step that MTSU needs to take.
“MTSU needs a dedicated Office of Sustainability, just like the one at Austin Peay, Tennessee Tech, UTK, Vanderbilt,” Smith said. “We’re a campus with tens of thousands of students. It’s a little bit ridiculous.”
The SEA reached the number of signatures needed for this petition, but Smith still encourages students to sign it to amplify their voices. The next step is to introduce a bill to the Student Senate.
Alyssa Williams is an Assistant News Editor for MTSU Sidelines.
To contact News Editor Kailee Shores, Assistant News Editor Alyssa Williams and Assistant News Editor Zoe Naylor, email newseditor@mtsusidelines.com.
For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines or on Twitter and Instagram at @mtsusidelines.
