While Dartmouth made it onto a list of the top 11 "healthy green" colleges, the author -- a Dartmouth professor -- has a strong opinion on what he sees as the College's recent slippage in environmental consciousness, alleging that the environment is no longer a leading priority of the College's top administrators.
Noel Perrin, assistant professor of environmental studies, authored a recent article for the April 6, 2001 issue of The Chronicle Review, a supplement to The Chronicle of Higher Education. The article, Perrin admits, is a somewhat "idiosyncratic" look at the nation's most environmentally-friendly colleges in the US.
Perrin believes that "Twenty years ago, Dartmouth College would have been a contender for the title of greenest college in America" and while there are many wonderful and effective programs still in place, he believes the College has "lost ground" in this area.
Specifically, he refers to the structure Berry Library as an example of how the school is becoming less conscious of environmental issues.
Despite all the planning that went into the $50 million library, there is a structural quirk that requires the snow on the roof to be melted by steam all winter, using valuable energy from the town's steam plant.
In an interview with The Dartmouth yesterday, Professor Perrin said that environmental concerns "should have been more on the minds of the library committee than it was."
Nearly everyone on the Environmental Science committee signed a letter asking to make Berry 'panels friendly' so that solar panels could be added when they become cheaper in the near future.
The library rejected the proposal Perrin claims, because "the architect [Robert] Venturi didn't want anything to interfere with his 'signature building.'" Perrin continued that he believes "Venturi was not so interested in the whole campus, just his own style."
In his article, Perrin describes Dartmouth as "a striking example of Perrin's Law: No college or university can move toward sustainability without the active support of two senior administrators."
He claims that "Dartmouth has no such committed senior administrators at all."
Perrin backed this up in an interview by saying there exists "nearly a total lack of interest by senior administration in alternative vehicles."
He also pointed out other structural problems around the campus -- energy wasters that could be easily and cheaply fixed.
He said "there are more modern elevators than you might think in Dartmouth buildings." This is a problem because modern elevators do not have counterweights, so they each take 20,000 watts to operate, and they are overused.
Although, in an interview, Perrin noted many devoted mid-level administrators, especially in the purchasing office, have made major strides as "recyclers and low users -- they're able to do quite a fair amount, and they do it."
When compiling his list of the 11 schools, Perrin said that he did not use any approved surveying techniques and "some of his conclusions are affected by [his] personal beliefs."
The other 10 colleges on the list are Brown University, Carleton College, Emory University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Tulane University, the University of California at Davis and Santa Cruz, the University of New Hampshire, Oberlin College , Northland College and Middlebury College.
But Perrin noted that he has come across some other "green" schools, such as Cornell University and Georgetown University, since he wrote the article six months ago.
He and his research assistant, Jessica Fortin '01, talked to the "well known schools in the environmental movement, like Oberlin College" to find out other schools making headway in this field.
His reasons for choosing these schools are mostly illustrated by anecdotal evidence. For many colleges on the list, he gives a few of the interesting steps the school has taken to earn their "greenest" title.
For example, Brown gives 700 tons of garbage each year to pig farms in Rhode Island. The University of New Hampshire has a new "Yellow Bike Cooperative" where anyone in the town can pay five dollars and get a key that will unlock 50 specially painted bikes all around the campus and town.
Perrin also lauds Northland College's McLean Environmental Living Center equipped with a wind generator, solar panels and even experimental "composting toilets."
These toilets are surprisingly successful -- the school set up conventional toilets nearby for any squeamish students, but as James Miller told Perrin, "Students almost always choose the composting bathrooms."
Perrin also takes a strong stance against "symbolic" gestures by schools -- like ineffective recycling programs and solar panels that are hardly functional and don't actually reduce energy consumption.
