Response # 7

Since I first started my journey at Goucher I have felt that the environment is something that is important to this campus as a whole. This is something that inspired me to join the GreenHouse and involve myself in more of the action side of sustainability on campus. Since joining, the Goucher environmental movement has a very different light to me. I still feel that people are interested, but sometimes it seems like that is as far as it goes. Last semester I spent a good bit of time trying to recruit students to live in the GreenHouse and it turned out to be an extremely difficult task. People showed interest and then backed out at the last minute. I feel like this happens a lot with these students groups. If you look at the mailing lists for both GCAG and Ag Co-op there are a lot of people on those lists but less than half go to the events and meetings. My question for Mr. Cortese is how do we get past this barrier? How do you convince people that this issue is worth your time and effort? Furthermore, for those who are part of these groups how do we get members interested in doing something different and interesting? I feel like so many people just rely on the ideas of a coupe extremely motivated members instead of trying to be innovative themselves. I can only imagine what would happen if there were more people being creative about creating this sustainable campus.

On the more administrative side of things I also feel that students environmental ideas are not given the priority that they should be. As someone who has dealt with this side of things I and the greenhouse have been turned down on multiple occasions. However, the college still loves to promote us to the outside world because we make the college look good. To me this can be very frustrating. I feel that the administration should be more open to student ideas if they are going to promote the student groups to the degree that they do. I honestly have no idea how this issue can be solved, especially since the bond between the students and the administration is so sensitive.

Ultimately I think this campus has a long way to go to becoming a sustainable community. I think we need to get more student action and not just the same small group of people. I think that the student groups that are already established really need to work together more in order to create a stronger sense of community and hopefully get more people involved in each groups events. Furthermore, I think that the bridge between the academic side of campus and the residential side of campus needs to be breached. I think that the classroom is one of the best places to get students motivated to do things. I really hope that this new environmental studies program can start melting these two sides of campus together. With these changes I think Goucher could be on it's way to becoming a very sustainable community.