The politburo of The George Washington University has once again let its students down. The administration continues to focus on issues such as sustainability, which are a silly gimmick used in order to popularly appear to be “green.” GW YAF has consistently come out against this, as we raised concerns about the administration taking a biased position on environmental issues, as they virtually required incoming freshmen to read Tom Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded, and brought global warming evangel Al Gore to campus last semester to discuss his new book.
However, GW’s latest attempt at “going green,” goes beyond ridiculousness, as it is clearly all smoke and no fire. The administration pushed students to turn off their lights for an hour in order to save energy for an “Earth Hour.” On a recent blog post, The GW Patriot columnist Will Frey, raised some great points as to why this stunt is clearly in vain: GW always keeps a great number of lights on in the academic buildings, the University Police have over 108 vehicles, and of which only one is a hybrid, and finally the Mont Vernon Express buses use an incredible amount of gas. Does GW raise these concerns in their annual sustainability report? I think not.
With the University being over a billion dollars in debt, and tuition being one of the highest in the country without corresponding academic ranking, you would think the administration would have bigger fish to fry.
Sam K. Theodosopoulos is the Editor-at-Large of the GW YAF Blog.
