Administrators give red light to green progress

UCLA’s students and faculty are to be congratulated for their concerns about the environment (“Week promotes ways to save energy,” News, May 16; “Two professors take divergent “˜green’ paths,” News, May 18).

Unfortunately, UCLA’s administrators show no such concern and ““ aside from announcing the formation of the usual do-nothing committees ““ actually show contempt for those trying to improve the environment.

The failure of UCLA’s administrators to allow the university to fulfill its role as a model is too important not to comment.

I have watched the various efforts of UCLA’s bureaucrats to evade the state and University of California environmental requirements for over 30 years.

I was involved in a lawsuit many years ago to persuade the administrators that they were not above the law but that, in fact, they had to comply with the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act.

There have been others over the years who have tried to enlighten the administration.

For example, there was the UCLA Urban Planning Program Comprehensive Project, which can be summed up by the Los Angeles Times headline “UCLA Identifies a Major Source of Pollution ““ Itself.”

Unfortunately, the environmental indifference persists and, no matter what UCLA’s army of public relations personnel says, the report is still true for the campus today.

Throughout the years, the main cause of UCLA’s environmental failure has been the many buildings constructed on campus through Capital Programs during the past 10 to 20 years, of which there is only one “green” building.

The environmentally concerned hoped that when the longtime head of this building project retired, UCLA’s record would change ““ but it seems that the new head of Capital Programs is not any better.

The acting chancellor and the new chancellor must take action ““ real action ““ to make UCLA an environmental model.

The administration should plant trees, especially along Bruin Walk in the De Neve Plaza area, make all new buildings “green”, provide more solar panels, plant vegetation on the rooftops, quit paving over the small amount of green space left on campus, use paper bags instead of plastic in the student store and much more.

The brochure for UCLA’s Environmental Law Center trumpets Aristotle: “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

It is time for the administrators, especially those at Capital Programs, to take some real action to protect nature at UCLA.

Milder is a chairman of UCLA Watch and a lifetime member of the UCLA Alumni Association.

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