CEDAR CITY — Southern Utah University students rallied for change on Wednesday, encouraging the university to commit to sustainability and refuse to be confined by political boundaries.
L-R: Annie Weight and Natasha Anderson join other Southern Utah University students in cold, wet weather for the university Sustainability Club’s Rally for Change, Cedar City, Utah, March 13, 2024 | Photo by Alysha Lundgren, St. George News
Approximately 40-60 people gathered on the SUU campus in front of Old Main, braving snow and hail, occasionally broken by sunshine. Students held handmade signs featuring sustainability-themed slogans as they listened to multiple speakers and live musical performances.
The SUU’s Sustainability Club organized the event to encourage university leadership to create a sustainability office and hire an employee to run it, and take more action on environmental issues.
Additionally, the students would like to see the informal Sustainability Committee codified as an official, university-sponsored committee, said committee member Annie Weight.
Committee member Natasha Anderson said that while efforts toward sustainability goals are underway, they are “spread all around campus” under various departments and programs.
“With a centralized location, all these efforts could work together more effectively,” she said. “An official committee and an office would show a real commitment by the university.”
Anderson said that stewardship is listed among SUU’s core values.
“Unfortunately, the truth is, SUU falls far behind other universities in Utah when it comes to civic responsibility and valuing stewardship,” she said. “Out of 10 institutions in the state, SUU ranked second to last in terms of sustainability-related programs and infrastructure.
“The majority of these 10 institutions had all of the following: detailed campus sustainability pledges or bylaws, an office of sustainability, some sort of sustainable transportation, like bikes or public transportation, regular community events related to sustainability and environmental education and sustainable practices in the dining hall.”
She added that half of these universities have a detailed plan to reduce carbon emissions, and half of them employ at least one full-time sustainability employee.
“SUU provides none of these,” she said.
The ranking information presented was crowdsourced by members of the committee who researched Utah’s colleges and universities. The committee’s head, Shannon Everhard, compiled it, Weight told St. George News.
“For an institution that calls itself the ‘university of the parks,’ this should raise some flags. … We should be leading the charge in terms of stewardship and environmental responsibility,” she said. “But instead, we are lagging far behind most of the other institutions of higher ed in Utah.”
SUU has done a “great job” connecting its students to the outdoors, Weight said, adding that the club would like the university to provide students with tools to advocate for public lands, responsible resource use and Indigenous sovereignty, and to think critically about environmental issues.
“We’re faced with a changing climate, with habitat loss, with water shortages, with local ecosystems that are damaged by pesticide use, polluted air, water and soil,” she said. “The list goes on, and all of these issues are happening in our state and in our county. However, our location at SUU and our connections to public lands agencies mean that we are uniquely positioned to make genuine change and show real leadership in this area.”
Tiger Funk, SUU’s vice president of operations, presented some of the club’s initiatives to university President Mindy Benson’s cabinet, Anderson told St. George News in an email.
“We received more support than we were anticipating,” she wrote. “We’re hoping with our rally to show how much students care about these initiatives, and to show the president’s cabinet that their support was appreciated. Additionally, we think it’s important to announce and celebrate that success publicly so that the administration knows that there are eyes on them and they can’t put our initiatives on the back burner.”
Weight said students will need to “keep the administration accountable.”
“It’s great that the university has been supportive of some of our ideas and that’s a great start to becoming better stewards,” she said. “But if we want to see real change on campus, we need support from all of you.”
When asked if they would consider signing some sort of sustainability pledge to show a concrete commitment to sustainability, Weight said the cabinet concluded that this would be too politically controversial even though other institutions of the state, including BYU, Utah State, University of Utah, Utah Valley University and Weber State University, all have a similar pledge.
Environmental issues intersect with other issues, such as safety, inclusion and equity, Weight said.
“When we begin to consider sustainability as a solution rather than a problem, we often find that these concerns are not separate but linked,” she said. “For example, a campus that promotes active, eco-friendly transportation, like biking, bike lanes, a bike-sharing program or a walkable campus — for example, including tactile paving for those who are visually impaired — is more equitable and safe for everyone, in addition to being kind to our environment.”
Additionally, Weight encouraged others to “refuse to be divided along political boundaries.”
“Anyone who has ever studied environmental justice or geography or political science or anthropology or sociology or psychology knows that sustainability is not just a fringe interest,” she said. “It’s not just a hippie or leftist movement. These issues should not be confined to one political party or another. The health of our environment is inextricably connected to the health of the people within that environment. So this is a human issue.”
Latinx Student Alliance President Hector Cedillo-Tellez said that as they discuss sustainability, they must remember to consider the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, as they’ve “historically been misrepresented and also have been marginalized by the U.S. federal government and Utah’s state government.”
Additionally, since Cedillo-Tellez will be graduating this year, he said he hopes others continue to “keep this spirit, this fight and this fire alive next year.”
“I know you guys are in good hands,” he said. “We have amazing staff and faculty that care about you guys, and they care about our campus and well-being.”
The students encouraged attendees to fill out a survey about sustainability aimed at SUU students, faculty and staff, which can be found at this link.
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2024, all rights reserved.