EvCC Sustainability and Laura Wild’s Nutrition Spring Quarter class partnered to install 35 Mason bee “huts” across the EvCC Campus in late May 2018.
The project is intended to help EvCC students, employees and neighbors understand the importance of these tiny pollinators to our campus plants, as well as providing a legacy project for Laura Wild’s students to manage each year.  An online EvCC Bee tour will be available online soon, courtesy of one of Laura Wild’s students. The EvCC Mason Bee project will be featured later this month in Crown Bee’s newsletter.

Background

If you were on campus during the week of April 16-19, you probably know what Earth Week is. In celebration of Earth Day, EvCC strives to host creative and fun activities for students, employees and the community, while fostering awareness about the struggles we face in regards to the environment, climate, and resource consumption. Earth Week has become a looked-forward to tradition on campus, but this tradition may not be with us for much longer…

The Green Fee

The EvCC Green Fee is a proposed student fee of 50 cents per credit, up to fifteen credits, not to exceed $7.50 per quarter for each student. It was proposed by a group of students, including the Students for Environmental Action club and members of the student government, in response to concerns over the impending budget shortfalls for the EvCC Sustainability Initiative (more on that here). In accordance with state law, this fee has to be subject to a student body election to determine whether it should be assessed. This election is scheduled for May 21-24, 2018. Ballots will be cast online using the MyEvCC Student Portal.

If it passes the election, three major developments would occur:

1. The creation of the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF): This fund would serve to fund student projects that focus on sustainability or the environment. A student, or group of students, could submit a proposal to receive a grant from the CSF to pay for their project. The proposal would be presented to a committee of 5 students and 2 employees, who will vote on whether to approve or reject the project proposal.
2. Formalize the Office of Sustainability: While EvCC has a full time staff member with part-time hourly assistants to coordinate the sustainability program, the Green Fee would be used to permanently establish an Office of Sustainability, which would help to manage the fee, the CSF, and its associated programs, while also continuing the effort to green the campus.
3. Student jobs: Within the Office of Sustainability, three student positions would be created and funded each year. These students would serve as the public faces of the EvCC Sustainability program and work to keep the student body actively engaged in making EvCC a more environmentally friendly, socially equitable and fiscally responsible campus.

The relationship of Earth Week and the Green Fee

As mentioned, the funding for Earth Week (which comes from the depleted sustainability budget) is not long for this world. In the past, money left over from grants that were intended for other projects like energy efficiency retrofits was pooled into the Sustainability Grant Fund. This was relied on for all student engagement activities hosted by the Sustainability manager.

After the end of this school year, there will hardly be enough funds in the sustainability budget to get through another years worth of activities. Those lovely green water bottles you may have got for free at one of our events? Paid for by the sustainability budget. The wonderful presentation by Ciscoe Morris? Also paid for by the sustainability budget. Nearly all the events require some kind of payment out of the sustainability budget, and it adds up quick!

Unless a long-term solution is implemented, we can prepare to say goodbye to many of these activities and programs. Dozens of students have expressed their concern about this, and most of us agree that something has to happen to change the status quo on carbon emissions, environmental toxicity, habitat and biodiversity loss, pollution, and many other global challenges.

This is why we, the students on the EvCC Green Fee Committee, are working to hold this election and secure funding for the program. But, we are also trying to change the entire premise of the EvCC Sustainability program. If its funded by a student fee, that would put the power to make the changes we need in our hands, as students. We would determine how the money is spent, what projects get funded, and ultimately how our campus approaches sustainability. So, in the end, we aren’t trying to just save the program by asking the students to pay for it. We are trying to revolutionize it by empowering the students to lead us down the path of sustainability, and ultimately giving ourselves a bigger voice in the long-term development of EvCC.

If you want to know how you can help, visit our webpage: EverettCC.edu/GreenFee, or email sustainability@everettcc.edu.

Also, don’t forget to vote!

After the ASB Senate approved the Green Fee Proposal last year, the students serving on the Green Fee Committee have been hard at work planning and executing the information campaign to prepare the campus for the election.

Throughout the final weeks of Winter Quarter, the committee made a “slow roll out” to begin introducing the idea to the student body. Now, as Spring Quarter is upon us, it’s time to really get to work!

Along with weekly information tables, there will be several opportunities for students to learn about this initiative. A student information forum was hosted in Winter Quarter, and two more are planned throughout Spring. Student LIFE has offered several social media posts on behalf of SEA Club, the primary sponsor of this initiative, and there is plenty of additional information available online.

The proposal that was approved by the ASB Senate calls for an election on the assessment of a new fee to support and expand the EvCC Sustainability Initiative. Any student enrolled at the time of the election has the right to vote. This came as a response to the impending budget shortfalls within the sustainability program, and due to the apparent “lack of leadership on the national level in regard to climate change and other environmental concerns,” as stated by the former president of Students for Environmental Action (SEA Club).

The proposed fee is 50 cents per academic credit for the first 15 credits taken each quarter, so it will not exceed $7.50 per student per quarter. The revenue will be allocated to the Campus Sustainability Fund (CSF), which can be used by EvCC students to fund their ideas for environmental or sustainability focused projects that help advance EvCC’s Sustainability Mission, and to the Office of Sustainability so the department can employ three part-time students each year.

The long term goal of the Green Fee Initiative is to empower the students to lead EvCC to a more sustainable future by minimizing our environmental footprint, balancing our resource consumption, and reducing our contribution to climate change.

As it stands, the group is still searching for students who can commit to volunteering for campaign events and who can go around to various campus organizations to give presentations on the Green Fee Initiative. If you know of, or you are an interested student, have them contact the committee by emailing sustainability@everettcc.edu.

If you want to do your own research, visit the campaign web page!

Thanks to all of our employees who participated in the CTR Survey last month. The winner of the drawing for a free Kindle Fire is Erika Smith, an Associate Faculty member from the Criminal Justice Department. Congratulations, Erika!

A new video released by Earth Corps details how river estuaries help combat climate change by sequestering huge amounts of carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide that becomes a part of this cycle is known as blue carbon (blue coming from the water involved in this cycle). Because of the incredibly fast cycle of growth, decay and soil buildup in river estuaries, carbon is absorbed and stored underground. In fact, if the Snohomish River Estuary, about a mile north of EvCC’s campus, were restored completely, it could sequester enough carbon to be equivalent to taking 1.7 million cars off the road by 2100. This means that estuaries are far better carbon sinks (the term for a biome that stores more carbon than it emits) than forests.

This new information proves how imperative it is that we continue the efforts to restore our river estuaries and improve our land management practices as we work toward averting the worst implications of climate change.

Watch Blue Carbon by clicking here!

Earth Corps has given us permission to circulate this video around campus, so if you’d like to use it in a presentation to students or staff, feel free and we encourage you to do so!

Thursday, January 11, the Cedar Hall Programming Intern worked hard to host the Cedar Hall Game Night, an event that was intended to build and foster a sense of community between residents living in Student Housing. The interns main goal was to build a positive relationship between Cedar Hall and Mountain View, new and returning residents, and domestic and international students. This event was the best attended held in Cedar Hall so far.

Also at this event was our Sustainability Team, hosting the kickoff for the Cedar Hall Energy Challenge! The challenge officially begins in February, and signups are going on now. The challenge is simple: EvCC Sustainability will determine the baseline energy usage for each unit in Cedar Hall using January’s data from the PUD. During the month of February, residents who have signed up their unit to participate in this challenge simply need to find ways to cut their electricity consumption. Since they are competing against their own baseline, the goal is to use less energy in February than they did in January.

At the end of the challenge dates, EvCC Sustainability will review the electricity usage data and compare each units consumption with their baseline. The ten residents whose units made the biggest reductions in electricity usage will receive a prize valued at $50 each.

Thanks to Residence Life Staff and others who helped make this event so popular, and also for supporting EvCC Sustainability!

If you live in Cedar Hall and want to sign up for the challenge, follow this link!