environment and "campus culture"

Yesterday's Washington Post reports that 280 colleges, including the University of Maryland, "have agreed to raise awareness about global warming and limit their institutions' emissions." This is, I think, good news. I find myself wondering, however, what changes we'll see on campus. In particular, will the university limit emissions, or will it take a more comprehensive approach and limit environmentally-damaging products on campus as well?

I'm thinking specifically of two things that I've found jarring on campus. The first is the number of people I see walking around with disposable containers (presumably for food they just bought) made of plastic or Styrofoam. The second is the number of cars I see on campus. Food containers don't burn fossil fuels, but they do require fossil fuels to make, and they're not biodegradable. And cars, of course, do emit toxins. So my question is: why do we have so much plastic, and so many cars, on campus? I don't think we have to, but eliminating them will probably require a change in the way we think here on campus, a change in our campus culture.

As an example, we might turn to one of the universities that our administration has dubbed an "aspirational peer institution." At the University of California, you won't see nearly as many non-biodegradable food containers as you will here. One reason is that Styrofoam was banned by the city of Berkeley years ago. Indeed, it's possible that the city's environmental laws are part of the reason there are very few fast food places near the Berkeley campus: fast food restaurants create a lot of garbage. Typically, they pass the cost of this garbage onto society--what economists call "negative externalities"--in the form of environmental cleanup. But when a city forces them to clean up their own garbage, they don't find it as profitable, because they must bear their own costs. Hence, Berkeley is a college town without much fast food, but with a relatively large number of independently-owed and environmentally-friendly restaurants. I don't know the degree to which environmental laws have affected Berkeley's campus culture or its cityscape, much less the incentives of fast-food franchises, but I think it's safe to say that the prevalence of independent and environmentally-conscious food places--places like our coop here on campus--have been good for both people and the environment.

As for cars, I'm often surprised that Campus Drive is a parking lot during the day. I find it hard to believe that anyone finds either gridlock or automobile fumes pleasant. Why so many cars? Especially when we have such a large parking area? Looking again at Berkeley, we find that students can't get parking permits unless they can show that they commute from more than two miles away. All remaining students must use public transportation. Despite the inconvenience, Berkeley denizens seem to prefer their current environment to an alternative environment with more parking and food-related trash. I suspect Marylanders would also.

What would happen if Maryland limited the number of cars, and the amount of garbage, on campus? No doubt some individuals would find this inconvenient. And we'd probably need better public transportation to make sure everyone could get where they needed to be. But would the inconvenience be worth a cleaner campus? And the knowledge that we weren't contributing to an environmental crisis caused disproportionately by the US? Indeed, there may come a time when we don't have a choice, when we simply don't have enough resources to choose an environmentally-unfriendly path. In the meantime, I think it's well worth considering ways of making the campus, the country, and the world more environmentally-friendly, even if that means reevaluating our campus culture.

First Course in American Studies

My big project for this summer is a major overhaul of our introductory course, AMST 201. After years of being offered in small, single-section format, we are moving to a large (for us, anyway) lecture of 100 students with 25-student discussion sections. My vision for the weekly "lecture" session is a multimedia talk show (think Dick Cavett, not Jerry Springer) with invited guests, media clips and performances organized around a theme.

To help me document this effort, I've invited Chirag Patel, a former student, to serve as my project manager and "Boswell", helping me articulate the rationale behind course decisions and record them for future use. We will be interacting through a new blog, First Course in American Studies, which is linked to this one. Please feel free to join the discussion; faculty, students (grad and undergrad), alumni and interested observers are all welcome.