Thursday, March 28, 2024

MSU should be pressured to live up to 'green' reputation

When I first visited MSU from New Jersey, I couldn’t help but notice the large smokestacks towering over campus. At the time, I was told it was just a power plant — a resource that uses steam to heat the building, sidewalks, etc. With that assurance and the constant proclamation of being an environmentally friendly and sustainable school, I made the decision to enroll at MSU rather than the small private school in Boston I already had planned on attending that fall.

A year and a half later, I feel like I’ve been lied to. Knowing the truth about this power plant — that it’s actually a coal plant that not only gets its coal by destroying mountains but also puts the health of the students and the surrounding community at risk — I’m ashamed to be a Spartan. To go green isn’t to just put up a bunch of recycling bins or even to turn off some lights when it’s convenient. To go green is to invest in the future of this campus, the students and the state of Michigan. Short-term responses without long-term investment are immoral and counterproductive. If we really want to be “Spartan Green,” we need to start taking accountability for the resources we buy, investing in sustainable and domestic energy that will be healthy for our students and for the community and be a leader in researching sustainable alternatives for the state of Michigan and for the nation.

I love this school, and I consider it my new home. And it’s for that reason I feel a responsibility to pressure the university to make the choices that it needs to make in order to make this campus healthier and stronger in the future.

Tabitha Skervin,
international relations sophomore

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