Whitman College has been fighting for the environment for years. In the past month, however, environmental awareness has reached a new high.
Students have been trying to help save the trees in every way possible. When asked if Whitman is green enough to compete with other liberal art colleges, President Bridges pointed out many “green” aspects of campus.
“We’re definitely pretty green. Ankeny is green 11-and-a-half months of the year. Most of the trees are green. The area of Mill Creek where we dump leftover Bon App soup and all of our garbage has a murky, greenish tint to it,” he said to a Pioneer reporter whose face grew progressively greener.
As he continued, it became evident that Bridges may be colorblind.
“We use a lot of green bricks to build buildings. The tennis courts are all green. Hell, we have green stop signs,” he said confidently.
The school has a lot of recycling bins that are green, but “recycling” is a vague term that gets tossed around casually.
“We recycle a lot of paper and stuff,” ranted Bridges. “It gets recycled into all sorts of things. Mostly trash, but also paper hats and spit wads. Sometimes if we have too much we burn it to heat Memorial Hall. Those gray stones are horrible insulation.”
One of the campus’ most promising environmentally aware additions was the introduction of Dyson hand-dryers to the bathrooms in the library. The air-dryers save fuel and paper, but are not the perfect substitute for paper towels.
“I blew my nose in one once and it broke. The machine. Not my nose. But my nose still tickled. I still think paper towels are better,” said first-year Kim Nelson. Nelson is currently being investigated for destruction of school property after tearing an air-dryer off the wall to clean up a puddle of spilled latte.
Even the Greek system has gotten the green bug, and that is not a reference to the plague of the Norovirus. Tau Kappa Epsilon signed a survey to divest in Greek yogurt because, well, we’ll let Chef Daniel Gerry explain.
“Greek yogurt is from Greece. Greece is across the Atlantic. We don’t want to waste oil on our food,” said Gerry while double-frying some bacon in its own grease. “We instead invested in grapefruits. Think about it.”
The Beta Theta Pi house has responded by using recycling water bottles as tobacco-spit receptacles.
“I shower with this stuff,” said senior Eric Herst, not specifying whether he was referring to the dip spit or Fiji bottled water.
Not all students are so certain that the environment is something worth their awareness.
“Sometimes I sauna with the door open. It’s like, is that global warming? Maybe, but it is really funny when people walk by,” said Emma Logan, a junior Kappa Kappa Gamma.
Other students have focused on positives when it comes to climate change.
“I like it when it’s warm. Like summer all year. Global warming sounds awesome,” said junior John Zacharson.