I just finished my first quarter at UC Santa Cruz was amazed by the environmental movement on campus. There are so many different groups doing everything from starting campus gardens to teaching classes on specific sustainability topics. For my involvement, I joined the Campus Sustainability Council and interned for the Student Environmental Center. The school passed two measures that give the campus sustainability council six dollars of every student’s tuition to allocate towards projects that are implemented by registered student organizations. We meet weekly for two hours to discuss our governing documents, grant application, audit process, timelines, outreach techniques, and review and interview our new grant applicants. As part of the council, I not only get to learn how to write a grant, but I get to experience evaluating grants.

The Student Environmental Center is a collection of environmental campaigns in different topic areas that work together to achieve sustainability. As part of the Student Environmental Center, I work on projects for the Waste Prevention Campaign and help put together environmental conferences like the California Student Sustainability Coalition's Convergence. I tried to start composting for the Crown College apartments and a Crown College staff share room but both projects were impractical at this time. I did a waste audit of the College 9/10 dining hall and took a tour of the composting facility at the Crown/Merrill dining hall. The administration is in the process of implementing compost collection at all the dining halls on campus. I was the local outreach coordinator for the California Student Sustainability Coalition’s Convergence where I did advertizing at school and arranged for the campus TV station to film the event. College environmentalists came to UCSC from all over California to teach each other about environmental campaigns and projects to do at our schools.

I’m going to be on the Earth Summit planning committee next quarter. Earth Summit is a yearly, city-wide event that Student Environmental Center throws every year to get student’s, staff’s, faculty’s and community members’ opinions on what the blueprint for a sustainable campus should look like (the guidelines for environmental progress that the Campus Sustainability Council uses to fund projects). If you live in Santa Cruz email me at ssbarret@ucsc.edu for more information. If you go to UCSC and want to get involved in either of the groups I mentioned go to enviroslug.org or attend the Student Environmental Center’s General Gathering Wednesday night 6:30-8:30pm. Here at Santa Cruz, there are a wide variety of powerful environmental groups and I hope to work with as many as I can to help with environmental protection.