Robert Cannot Come Out
To Rap Today

From the Daily:

December 12, 2007

More than 450 college presidents and chancellors across the country have signed a commitment to make their campuses more sustainable.

University President Bob Bruininks is not one of them.

The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, launched in October 2006, is essentially the Kyoto Protocol for colleges: a set of guidelines that will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from campuses across the nation.

Bruininks has not yet made a decision on whether he will sign the commitment and said he would not comment for the story.

Tony Cortese, a co-director for the climate commitment project, said signing the commitment gives universities a chance to be societal leaders.

"The University of Minnesota has a great reputation in sustainability and has been a leader in much of the research," Cortese said. "By signing the commitment, the president would be essentially supporting the research his University has already done."

Cortese said some presidents don't sign the commitment because they believe the requirements are too complicated or too expensive to execute.

Jennifer Ward, a spokeswoman for the president's office of Berkley, said the school was already meeting the standards of the commitment before they signed it in March 2007.

"The signing was just a formal matter of demonstrating to other folks our commitment to environmental sustainability," Ward said. "For all the points that are listed in the program, we had already been meeting them for two or three years, if not more."

Todd Reubold, communications director for the Institute on the Environment, said the University isn't going to make its decision based on what other colleges are doing.

"Each university system has its own uniqueness," Reubold said. "So to say just because the University of California system signed on that we automatically should, I don't think is a wise decision."

[But of course we are going to use "being like Berkeley" as a rationale for other things...]

Stephen Peichel, president of the student group Applied Environmental Solutions, said if the University wants to continue to promote itself as a leader in environmental sustainability, Bruininks must sign the commitment.

"I can't see how the U can say that they are on the cutting edge and be a top research University without pursing one of the top issues in the world," Peichel said.

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Ah, about those ambitious aspiration to be one of the top three public research universities in the world ....

Ciao, Bonzo