Question: How many undergraduates does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: None ““ UCLA Facilities Management does it.
Beginning Monday, UCLA undergraduates will be able to place their votes not only for such positions as USAC president, as well as external and internal vice presidents, but also on The Green Intiative Fund referendum.
If passed, The Green Initiative Fund would raise student fees by $4 per quarter, totalling over $200,000 per year to help fund student-led sustainability efforts. Both UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara currently fund students’ efforts to address their environmental concerns.
While this would be an impressive amount of money to put toward making UCLA greener, the referendum’s current structure is inefficient and will direct funds toward impractical efforts such as organic gardens for the dining halls and paid student internship opportunities for environmental work.
Rather than focus student funds and energy to help the environment, The Green Initiative Fund should go to large-scale projects with stronger potential for change. The money could be put toward installing more solar panels, increasing recycling efforts and using energy-saving lightbulbs on the Hill.
The student leaders of The Green Initiative Fund, also known on campus as TGIF, have made it clear that the internship opportunities and the plan for an organic garden are simply seeds to get students and faculty brainstorming on other possible propositions, but the structural organization of this initiative is the referendum’s weakest point.
The biggest problem with the referendum is the power it places in the hands of staff, faculty and, most specifically, undergraduate students rather than with those at UCLA who have the authority to instill these tangible and larger-scale projects such as the Office of the Chancellor at UCLA or even those higher up within the University of California system.
If the referendum is passed, proposals submitted to TGIF will then go through an approval process including facilities and other related areas of authority before getting the green light. However, at an institution as large as UCLA with funds exceeding $200,000, there should be a more systematic, top-down line of power in order to involve those with the true ability and oversight to put major projects into effect.
Additionally, one idea mentioned by a leader from The Green Initiative Fund is to grow an organic garden ““ something particularly impractical for the UCLA campus.
Our campus, the smallest of all the UCs at 412 acres, has little room to plant a garden, and of the green areas on campus, little is natural grass that is feasible for such a project.
The recent support from UCLA students for the referendum showcases the great amount of potential for a greener UCLA in the near future.
However, students willing to pay also deserve a more effective solution to the current long list of environmental issues our campus and our world face daily.
The most romantic ideas may be the most daring or brave but many times prove to be inefficient, and The Green Initiative Fund referendum is no different.
But to brainstorm and implement truly noteworthy and breakthrough ideas in the face of this cause, students need to wake up and smell the smog.