I learned irreplaceable lessons on everything from working in groups to interacting with people from different cultures. I’d recommend that every student study abroad, and I regret I didn’t go sooner.

Teamwork

Professors at St. Thomas spend lots of time teaching students to work in groups. They claim it’s an important skill, but in the past I would internally cringe whenever I was assigned group work. I always ended up doing most of the work.

Well, studying abroad is a crash course on teamwork. Forget the group projects I had done in previous classes; while abroad I was with 23 students 12 hours or more every day, for 28 days. It was a never-ending group project.

One of the many instances abroad where group work was required is also a big part of the typical “study abroad experience”: the party scene.

It was one of our first nights as a class in London, and it was also one of our first nights partying together. We all took the tube to an area of London filled with popular pubs and clubs. Once we got to the club, I asked how we were going to get back because the tube would be closed. No one was sure, but they didn’t seem to be worried as they paid their entrance fees and hurried to join in the dancing and drinking.

I felt that sinking feeling in my stomach – the identical feeling I get when I know I’ll be stuck doing all the work. Irritated, I resigned myself to figuring out the complex bus system to make sure everyone got home safely.

But luckily, three people in my group helped me decipher the bus system and we worked together to get everyone home. I wasn’t as stressed as I had thought I would be, thanks to their assistance.

Throughout the trip, everyone in my class got to know each other well. Some students were irritated by other students, as I was the first night when we went out. But being thrown into new situations taught us to work together and have fun as a group. Studying abroad reinforced everything my professors had taught me about the importance of working in a group.

Cultural differences

One of the main incentives to study abroad is the opportunity to learn about other cultures. I saw Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles Palace, Blarney Castle…the list goes on. I thought after seeing these places and reading histories of the cities and countries, I understood the cultures.

But it wasn’t until I visited an Irish pharmacy that I fully understood what experiencing another culture means. I had been sick off and on during the trip, and the Saturday a week before we went home I woke up with red eyes, a fever and no voice.

I walked to the pharmacy across the street and asked the pharmacist what she recommended I take for my symptoms. She told me I needed to see the doctor, but still gave me medicine. As I was reaching for my credit card, she told me the credit card machine was broken. I didn’t have 25 euro with me, so I started putting the medicine back on the shelves.

But she stopped me and told me to take the medicine and come back to pay for it Monday. I was shocked. She didn’t want to know where I was staying and didn’t even want my credit card number. We were in Cork, a city of about 400,000 people. How could she trust me?

I rushed back to the pharmacy Monday, still without 25 euro because the bank hadn’t opened. She told me to come and pay for it whenever – maybe Friday or the next week? I’m still surprised she trusted me to return and pay for the medicine, which I eventually did. When I asked my professor if it was normal for Irish people to be so trusting, he said it was.

Developing friendships

Studying abroad allows students to meet new people they otherwise wouldn’t associate with. I don’t think I would have made friends with all the individuals on my trip if we had met in a regular classroom and I know I wouldn’t have made as much of an effort to get to know them on a deep level.

But because we were all part of this trip and shared in this unique experience, we formed friendships.

Now I’m confident I’ve experienced everything I wanted to as an undergraduate. I wish I had dared to study abroad as a sophomore or even a freshman, but I’m happy I learned everything I did on my trip, even if it had to wait until my last class. It was the perfect finale to my time at St. Thomas.

Rebekah Frank can be reached at rfrank@stthomas.edu.

To keep information private so only friends can see it, a user has to decide between more than 170 options and click through 50 privacy buttons on average, according to The New York Times. And if you want to actually understand how your personal information is being shared with the world, you have to read through the 5,830-word privacy policy. Still have questions? Take a look at the privacy-related FAQ section that has a word count of more than 45,000.

Not only is Facebook taking advantage of its users, it’s trying to hide what it’s doing in a tangle of complicated settings and policies. This is wrong. A company as large as Facebook needs to be honest and give clear explanations for its actions. Facebook has done neither.

Instant messages attributed to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19 years old provide interesting insights into his attitudes toward privacy. In one of the messages attributed to Zuckerberg, he says people who submitted personal information to the original Harvard version of Facebook and trusted him with it were “dumb [expletive]s.”

And yes, Zuckerberg is now 26 and the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company, but Facebook’s current privacy policies seem to follow a similar line of thought. Maybe we are dumb for trusting Zuckerberg and the rest of the company not to misuse our information or invade our privacy.

One might argue that Facebook users shouldn’t complain because they get to use the service for free. But where would Facebook be without its millions of users looking at the advertisements and bringing in ad revenue? Facebook without any users is dead, so users should be able to voice their concerns, especially their concerns over privacy.

Changes pose privacy pitfalls

The new changes allow Facebook to share users’ personal information with more third-party websites than ever before. And the worst part is, these are now the default settings. If you want to opt out, you have to navigate the confusing maze of options and settings. And even then, some of your information can never truly be private.

For example, the new community page feature links to information about a user’s hometown or university. The only way to prevent this information from being shared is to actually delete the information from your profile.

Applications are an even greater threat to privacy. Applications pull information from a user’s profile, and Facebook doesn’t have the resources to police the numerous applications it supports to make sure all third parties are using the information legally.

I understand Facebook makes money from advertising, and that’s fine. But it gets scary when third parties can access every single detail of your life and use the information however they want. It opens up the door to thousands of worrisome scenarios. I want to feel secure on a social networking site instead of feeling like Big Brother is taking note of everything I post.

College students were the first to embrace and popularize Facebook. They have dealt with Facebook widening to include high schoolers, professors and employers. But college students shouldn’t have to worry about privacy issues on top of it all. They should be able to post personal information without worrying which company will see it or who will use it for questionable purposes.

People have begun leaving Facebook in protest. One alternative to Facebook, called Diaspora, has been created to give users control over their personal information and what they post. Another alternative for college students only, Collegiate Nation, is similar to the early college-student-exclusive Facebook. It’s designed to give disenchanted Facebook users more privacy and control.

But even though these new social networking websites are intriguing, I’m not planning to delete my Facebook account. Instead, I think Facebook users should band together to tell Facebook executives how they feel. Small groups of people might not accomplish much, but if the more than 400 million people who are registered with Facebook all speak out, I’m betting Zuckerberg and the rest will pay attention.

Privacy is important, even in our digital age where nothing personal is sacred. If we want to hold on to the small sections of privacy we have left, we Facebook users need to let the company know that we want clear explanations and a better privacy policy. I don’t want to look back five years from now and regret being “dumb” enough to trust Facebook with my personal information.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

The Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex is set to open in August. (John Kruger/TommieMedia)

As I made the marathon walk to South Campus this winter and early spring to play basketball, I would tell myself it’s going to be worth the wait.

As I worked on the third floor of the John Roach Center and had to listen to borderline ridiculous sounds of construction, I would tell myself it’s going to be worth the wait.

Now with less than four months to go until the opening of the new Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex, I’m really telling myself it’s going to be worth the wait.

I feel like a kid who sees a present underneath the Christmas tree and knows it’s exactly the bike he’s been asking for, but can’t open it yet. Except the bike is a $52 million athletic complex that’s going to be the premier facility in the conference.

As an incoming freshman, the athletic facilities were far from a make-or-break factor in my decision to come to St. Thomas. But while working for equipment manager Willy McCoy in the first semester, I quickly realized the facilities were sub-par at best.

To this day I remember my first attempted backdoor cut drill on the third-floor gym surface. I went down like Happy Gilmore on skates. Not pretty, but very characteristic of the quality of surface we were on, and the third-floor gym seemed to embody the rest of our athletic facilities.

But with no signs of change in sight, like every Tommie I got used to what I had and learned to live with our athletic facilities. Aside from traveling to opposing arenas for basketball games, it was tough to see we were missing out on anything too great. We couldn’t have it that bad, right?

That thought was fine until our friends up Summit Avenue hit us square between the eyes with the 175,000 square-foot Leonard Center. Macalester might as well have thrown an alarm clock at our heads and screamed, “Wake up!”

Lucky for us, the St. Thomas powers-that-be aren’t heavy sleepers. They woke up to the tune of the largest project in St. Thomas history. The Scots may have beaten us to the punch, but we’re answering with a serious swing. This place is going to be huge.

Two-thousand-seat basketball arena. Eight-lane pool. Two-hundred-meter track. New weight room and equipment. New aerobic rooms. And those are just the necessities.

The school is tricking this place out like an episode of “MTV Cribs: Athletic Centers.”

An entire wall is going to be a touch-screen, interactive archive for the athletic hall of fame. People will be able to access archives dating back into the far reaches of St. Thomas College history. According to TommieMedia’s latest venture into the building, there’s going to be a scoreboard that drops down over the center of the arena. NBA-style, baby.

University Relations designers are having a field day planning how to make their new baby look its finest for its coming out party in August. Just to make sure they weren’t dabbling too close to McDonald’s Grimace territory, a unique “Tommie Purple” paint color was created.

Details like that are what makes me believe Vice President for Student Affairs Jane Canney when she says these facilities are going to be the finest in the MIAC. We’re going to have all the high-quality things a top Division-III athletics school should have, and it’s going to look good in the process.

I’m only going to get one year with the new complex, and I can still say with confidence: It’s definitely going to be worth the wait.

Jordan Osterman can be reached at jrosterman@stthomas.edu.

The remnants of one club's lunchtime meeting stack up. (John Kruger/TommieMedia)

College students are pressed for cash, especially near the end of the semester. But if you’re running low on meals, just stroll through O’Shaughnessy Educational Center during convocation hour and pick up some pizza from a club meeting. After all, you’re paying for it.

Student activity fees from your pocket go to the Undergraduate Student Government and are then allocated to the 130 clubs and organizations on campus. So, how do you feel paying for someone else’s board game night, ping-pong tournament or fishing weekend?

Student activity fees are going up. This school year, the fee was $102 per semester ($51 for part-time students). Next year, the fee will be $105.50 per semester for full-time students. It’s a slight increase, but it adds up quickly, especially with tuition and housing increases. And it’s important that the roughly $181,000 given to clubs and organizations this past year only goes to clubs that deserve the money.

I find it unsettling how many clubs are on campus relative to membership. To start a club, you only need 10 people and a faculty advisor. You must hold at least three meetings and each member must complete 1.5 service hours. You have to fill out a form and submit it to Student Life. Then it goes to Campus Life and, finally, gets approved by USG. Then you’re in.

With an undergraduate enrollment of about 6,100 students, you only need 10 people to start a club. That’s only a little more than 0.1 percent of the undergraduate population, but that small percentage of students can receive a maximum of $750 to fund the club’s first year. That’s a lot of money for a small number of students.

Regulating clubs

Clubs and organizations are supposed to benefit the larger community and have a purpose that fits St. Thomas’ mission statement and vision. But some club descriptions only seem loosely connected to the mission statement.

The Table Top Gaming Club’s mission, for example, is, “to engage students of UST by having fun and creating social networks in casual tournament style settings. Through games such as Risk, collectable card games, and fantasy role-playing games which will increase a student’s use of strategy and critical thinking.”

How is that different than casino nights hosted by STAR or game nights sponsored by residence halls? Maybe strategy and critical thinking could best be learned through the budgeting, advertising and other management skills required to run a club that more people can be involved in.

There are just too many clubs, and often it’s difficult to distinguish between one club’s goals and another’s. I find it ironic that multiple sustainability groups exist. It doesn’t surprise me that a Catholic school has many Christian groups, but there’s a club called Christian Leaders and its purpose is to “unite various Christian organizations on campus by bringing representatives from all of the Christian clubs and organizations on campus.”

I would rather see these clubs unite and receive a pool of funding instead of separate funding in addition to a paid leadership board.

How USG deals out the money

Brady Narloch, USG vice president of financial affairs, said during his four years on USG, he can only think of one or two clubs that haven’t been approved.

“When it comes to USG’s viewpoint on the matter, we should really be giving the benefit of the doubt when it comes approving clubs,” he said.

By the time clubs go to USG for final approval, “they’ve already been through a significant vetting process,” Narloch said.

Narloch said USG tends to allocate money to clubs and organizations that have more detailed budget forms. He admitted the system isn’t perfect, but said USG tries to do the best it can to give the money out responsibly.

“We don’t have time and resources to look into all the clubs and look into what they say they’re doing,” Narloch said regarding whether USG makes sure clubs fulfill the USG requirements. But he added that USG has increased the number of finance board members and those members check if students in charge of clubs and organizations use their funds for what they said they would.

Clubs should help create life skills

I don’t think all clubs are bad. I’m actively involved in some clubs on campus. Students benefit from clubs that give back to the community and enhance academic or spiritual development. Students can also get valuable experiences that apply to career and life situations. That’s the goal of college, right? To make students better citizens of the world so they can function in post-college life.

We need to re-evaluate how clubs come into existence and whether they benefit the community, especially since students pay for the funding. I would like to see stricter regulation of club funding and more investigation into whether clubs meet requirements. I want my money to go toward the greater community instead of paying for another student’s pizza lunch.

Theresa Malloy can be reached at mall5754@stthomas.edu.

Even STAR's signs for the concerts lack appeal. (Mary Kenkel/TommieMedia)

Every semester I look forward to one thing: the STAR concert. Even though my past experiences with St. Thomas’ concerts have been hit or miss, I still get excited.

But this semester’s concerts disappointed me more than ever before.

STAR announced April 29 that Jordin Sparks will perform May 8 in O’Shaughnessy Educational Center. Jordin’s music is the typical pop you hear on KDWB, but she hasn’t had a true hit since “No Air,” her 2007 duet with Chris Brown.

I don’t want to go to another concert like every other show St. Thomas has had, such as Michelle Branch and Sara Bareilles.

This spring’s line up is a flashback to yesteryear. Jordin Sparks has not been relevant since winning season six of “American Idol” in 2007. Many seniors are also having déjà vu, rembering their freshman year when Phil Vassar performed on campus.

Is it really necessary to invite repeat performers when there are so many other great artists to choose from?

Music math

Jordin Sparks is costing the university $50,000. Let’s break this down.

The money used to pay for musicians comes from student activity fees. If student activity fees fund the artist coming to campus, shouldn’t the entire student body be able to attend the concert?

Only 600 can attend the Jordin Sparks concert. If each of those 600 students were to pay directly for his or her ticket, it would cost $83. But instead, those 600 students get to go “for free,” while the rest of the students who don’t go still fund the concert through activity fees.

Overall, STAR is shelling out $110, 000 to bring an irrelevant pop artist and a country star who performed here less than five years ago. Both performers hover along the same line of pop sensations. There have to be other artists we could bring, right?

A laundry list of options

Gustavus Adolphus College recently had hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco perform on campus for the same price as Jordan Sparks. Tickets were available for purchase for students and the public as well. A lot of Tommies even went to see the concert.

In 2008, Creighton University, a St. Thomas-sized Jesuit school in Omaha, Neb., brought in alternative rockers Third Eye Blind to play at no charge to its students. Marquette University, another school comparable to St. Thomas, hosted electronic mash-up artist Girl Talk in February 2010.

According to Main Stage Productions, which lists college concert booking prices, there are plenty of other relevant artists for $50,000 or less.

Why doesn’t St. Thomas bring a hip-hop artist? For the price of Jordin Sparks, Tommies could be enjoying a performance by Common. Cobra Starship, an alternative band, has a couple hits under its belt and costs well under $50,000. Even recent pop sensation Ke$ha is less expensive and certainly more relevant.

Students not too excited

According to a TommieMedia poll, most students are not thrilled about the spring concert line up. Out of the 346 people that voted in the poll, 36 percent are completely uninterested in the concert line-up. An additional 21 percent of people said they don’t even know who the performers are.

Students should be the ones to decide who performs at concerts because their money is being used. Clearly there are other Tommies who are just as disappointed with the spring concert line up as I am.

I think there should be a better means of deciding which performers are invited. Polls to decide the artists should be better advertised to the student body. If a majority of students get to vote, that means more students will be happy.

Gina Dolski can be reached at grdolski@stthomas.edu

“I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent,” the student wrote in an e-mail discussing the genetic basis of intelligence.

That’s probably not an opinion you’d want to share even with close friends, but the incident might have stopped there if not for that handy “forward” feature. One of the intended recipients decided to forward it to members of the Harvard Black Law Student Association. From there, it was forwarded to Black Law Student Associations across the country, and the media picked up the story.

I bet that student is wishing she’d thought twice before hitting “send.” Especially because she is reported to be a candidate for a federal clerkship, and irate recipients of her e-mail are organizing efforts to prevent her from getting that position.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of e-mail exchanges as private conversations. But in theory, everyone with an e-mail address could be invited into your “private” conversation. Even one person hitting “forward” can start a domino effect, and soon your supposedly private e-mail is public property.

We’ve all made mistakes where we’ve sent e-mails to the wrong person, forwarded an e-mail to someone when we meant to hit “reply,” or mistakenly hit “send” before we’d finished writing the rest of the e-mail.

That’s why it’s so important to watch what you say in an e-mail. Unfortunately, e-mail doesn’t have an “edit – undo” feature. You can’t take back an e-mail back after it’s been sent.

Even hitting “reply all” can be dangerous. For example, imagine you’re having an e-mail conversation with a classmate about a group project. Your classmate sends you an e-mail asking questions about the project, and you write back with your answers – and a long, whiny complaint about how your professor assigned a ridiculous amount of work and how you can’t wait to be done with the class.

You hit “send,” and then realize that instead of simply hitting “reply,” you’d hit “reply all.” And your classmate copied your professor on the original e-mail, so your professor will now be able to read your angry rant about the class. Oops.

If you keep your e-mails respectful and professional, you won’t need to worry if they end up in the wrong inbox. There’s been lots of talk about the dangers of putting incriminating or embarrassing information on social networking sites, but e-mail can be even more hazardous to your future career prospects.

Even if an e-mail is meant to be sarcastic or funny, if it gets forwarded to others, it might not be forwarded in its original context. It’s better to take the safe route and remind yourself that every e-mail you send could potentially be read by your professors, relatives and employers.

Check over your e-mails before you send them, and remember the power of the “reply all” and “forward” features. Don’t jeopardize your future because of your inability to self-censor, like the Harvard Law student. One poorly worded e-mail can significantly damage your reputation.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

St. Thomas' Personal Counseling and Testing center is located on the third floor of Murray-Herrick Campus Center. (John Kruger/TommieMedia)

This past year, 30 percent of college students have been so depressed that they had difficulty functioning, 47 percent have experienced overwhelming anxiety, and 46 percent have felt things were hopeless, according to a survey of more than 50 schools by the American College Health Association.

Yet only 8 percent of St. Thomas undergraduate students visited the on-campus Personal Counseling center last year.

This is a serious problem. Students at St. Thomas struggle with depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other mental health disorders like students at other schools, so the numbers of students with these problems here should be comparable to other campuses.

Even more troubling, St. Thomas students who have these problems and don’t seek help are still paying for the center and the salaries of the counseling staff through their tuition, even if they don’t use the services. Eight percent of students may use the counseling center, but 100 percent of students pay for it.

So why are so few students seeking on-campus help, and what needs to happen to help students in need get counseling?

Stigmas must stop

Part of the problem is that St. Thomas students have mental illness stigmas. A common perception is that admitting to having a mental disorder is a sign of weakness. Asking for help means you’re a failure at dealing with stress or events in your life.

Personal Counseling Director Geraldine Rockett said there are widespread stigmas at St. Thomas about going for counseling.

“St. Thomas students are very independent go-getters who like to take care of their own problems,” Rockett said. “They aren’t like some people at other schools who think it’s cool to have your own shrink.”

But even fiercely independent people need help sometimes, and that’s why students need to throw away these stigmas. Stigmas prevent people from seeking treatment, and make mental health problems a forbidden topic, a dirty secret no one wants to admit to.

If mental health issues were talked about more openly, students would realize that going to a counseling center when they’re feeling depressed isn’t any different than going to the doctor when they sprain an ankle. Students shouldn’t make other students feel ashamed for seeking professional help, whether it’s from a physician or a psychiatrist.

Denial also keeps students from visiting the counseling center as often as they need to. Many students deny they need help, or feel their problem isn’t significant enough that they need counseling. But problems that seem relatively small can quickly spiral out of control, and students shouldn’t wait until their lives fall apart before talking with a therapist.

Counseling center needs stronger campus presence

Another way to encourage more students to seek mental health treatment would be to open up the counseling center itself. The Personal Counseling office is hidden away at the top of Murray-Herrick Campus Center and many students probably aren’t aware it exists.

Unfortunately, this won’t be changing anytime soon. The office will stay tucked away in its current location, out of heavily trafficked areas and out of students’ minds, even after the Anderson Student Center opens.

But counseling staff and university administrators should still work to increase the counseling center’s visibility on campus, even without a location change. Rockett said the average percentage of students who visit the counseling centers at schools demographically similar to St. Thomas is 10 percent. This means St. Thomas is below average, so spreading awareness about counseling services is important.

The counseling staff holds several events each year, such as depression screenings. But if students saw the therapists even more, whether as guest speakers in classes or talking with students in informal settings at different campus events, the therapists would seem more approachable and students would be more willing to visit them.

Rockett said the counseling staff used to discuss mental health issues during PHED 100 classes every semester, so all students heard of the counseling center. But because this requirement has been canceled, there are no widespread ways to tell students the benefits of counseling.

The university could start a zero-credit freshman seminar addressing mental health problems and other health and wellness issues. Freshmen could pick from the times offered and attend a seminar every few months. Instead of piling even more information on freshmen during orientation, this would be an effective way to remind them of mental health issues during their first year and make every student aware of the Counseling Center.

There aren’t any good reasons why students should sit in their rooms by themselves, struggling with complex emotional and mental issues, when they can receive competent, professional help on campus. If therapists and administrators make an even greater effort to tell students about these services, and if students let go of their stigmas, St. Thomas students’ mental health could considerably improve.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.

I first became aware of the designation via an e-mail sent to all seniors on April 11 from our class president, Thomas Engrav. In the section regarding the senior class gift, he writes, “I, along with a committee of seniors, decided that we’d like our class to raise money to create a scholarship that will support students who want to participate in the VISION program.” I do not know who the members of the committee referenced in the e-mail are or how or when it was set up. To my knowledge there was no vote taken to determine the membership of this committee.

I have chosen not to support the senior class gift because of the lack of representation given to the students of our class in designating the recipients of our generosity. To clarify, this has nothing to do with the quality or worthiness of the VISION program, but simply the fact that no one other than the members of the “committee” had any say in where the money is going. Had a class-wide election been held and the VISION program came out on top, I would have most definitely supported the fund. I was under the impression that in the past, senior gifts have gone into a general scholarship pool, supporting all future students equally with no designation. Any departure from this prior precedent should have been put to a vote by all members of our class.

Seniors, if you have not yet received a call from the St. Thomas Development Office soliciting a donation to the senior class gift, you will soon. I was contacted last night and shared my views with the student caller. If you feel the same way I do, I urge you to not support the Class of 2010 scholarship fund and outline your reasons for doing this to the student caller. I do hope that this sends a message to future classes to change the system and give seniors a voice in what happens with our gifts.

John Gummerson, senior

Many basic questions, such as what exact steps are needed to go carbon neutral, are lost in a bureaucratic tangle of organizations and initiatives.

Student-led clubs and organizations include the Green Team, the USG Sustainability Committee, Engineers for a Sustainable World, UST Solar Initiative and Students in Free Enterprise, which helps coordinate Recyclemania promotional events.

Among administrators, staff and faculty,  the UST Sustainability Committee reports to the Academic and Administrative Leadership Group. Many departments also coordinate their own sustainability efforts, from the geography department to University Relations, and of course the Environmental Studies Program plays a role in sustainable efforts.

Add in all the intercollegiate sustainability groups St. Thomas belongs to, and the result is a confusing mess of  groups, each with their own agendas and ideas of what’s best for St. Thomas.

It’s not surprising that for all the talk about sustainability on campus, there have been no earth-shattering changes. The closest the university has come to a significant, large-scale project is installing solar panels on Brady Hall’s roof, and that wasn’t even an administration-led effort. Students thought up that project.

The UST Sustainability Committee’s current plan is for St. Thomas to go carbon neutral by 2035. While a quarter of a century may seem a long way off, there’s a lot that needs to happen before then if St. Thomas hopes to achieve that goal, and it can’t be done if sustainability efforts remain disjointed.

Groups should get on the same page with sustainability

Different sustainability organizations have to band together. Right now, lots of organizations probably aren’t even aware of all the projects other groups are working on. And small projects are great, because every step helps, but if these organizations hope to make a difference, they’ll have to initiate major sustainability initiatives.

Many current projects address short-term goals. For example, going trayless in the cafeteria reduces energy costs and food waste, but what about the larger issues of where that food originally comes from, how much it costs to get that food to St. Thomas and where St. Thomas’ energy comes from?

Individual organizations and clubs can address aspects of sustainable issues, but to solve the larger problems, communication and cooperation between groups is necessary. The UST Sustainability Committee could take the lead by bringing all sustainability-related groups together. Then members from each group could apply their specific knowledge and skills to different problems on campus.

For example, if St. Thomas’ administration decided to buy more clean energy, members from different groups could help with specific aspects of the effort. Student-led groups could raise awareness among students and keep tabs on student opinion, departments could introduce discussions about clean energy into classes, and the administration could develop new rules regulating energy use on campus.

Much more could be accomplished in shorter amounts of time, and everyone involved in sustainability efforts would be on the same page for once.

Of course, for all this to happen, sustainability data needs to be more readily updated and available. In the “News and Events” section of the “Sustainability at UST” website, the most recent listed event is the Mississippi River cleanup that took place last October. And it’s hard for students to find information about which buildings at St. Thomas use the most energy, for example, so students don’t know where sustainability efforts are needed.

A new Climate Action Plan outlining St. Thomas’ plan to go carbon neutral by 2035 is currently being considered. Hopefully the CAP will explicitly state what St. Thomas needs to do to achieve carbon neutrality and provide concrete suggestions for what clubs and organizations should focus their efforts on. For the CAP to be useful, it also should provide comprehensive data about sustainability problem areas at St. Thomas.

Many people at St. Thomas have made admirable efforts to help the university go green. But different groups need to start coordinating their efforts so significant changes can occur because baby steps won’t lead to carbon neutrality by 2035.

Katie Broadwell can be reached at klbroadwell@stthomas.edu.