Blog #2

The university's mission statement is all about being "eco-friendly". Although they have put forth some effort, I don't think they necessarily went about it the right way. From the discussion in class I learned about the damaging effects that just the choice of placement caused. The fact that we have solar panels that are only like 9% effective when there are others out there around 40% just goes to show that it's basically a half-ass way to "go green". One thing I've noticed is that they try to encourage people to bike, and ride their long boards to class, but really, when you live on campus, I don't think it makes much of a difference to walk or drive the quarter mile. Along with the solar panel trash cans being in the shade, some areas where water falls off the roof not having rocks, and others that do, it all just seems a tad inconsistent. The campus trail was pretty nice, I thought it was kind of strange that other students were out catching the baby turtles, cause that just seemed like disrupting wildlife. I did think it was pretty cool that there was a little picnic area underneath some big oak trees. My background of being exposed to a lot of land with not a lot of manipulation by man may make me a little biased. I feel like the University has gone a little overboard with certain things, like the big new building by Lugert Hall, that the construction will be completed but after losing the funding it won't be able to be furnished. I don't really think that it's fair that they can keep increasing our tuition by 15% every semester to cover those costs that they probably should have already had set aside before the construction even started. All in all, I believe that they may have the right state of mind, they just need to figure out a more consistent, and effective way, to change things for the better.