As Macalester students, the message that we are currently living in the midst of a growing worldwide environmental crisis carries a dull, familiar tone. We are all aware of the crises of resource depletion, population growth, climate change, and other mounting calamities. However, despite the growing urgency of environmental awareness in confronting today’s changing planet, Macalester as an institution has largely failed to incorporate an ecological perspective into its framework. Though we at least profess to emphasize multiculturalism and internationalism at this school, ecological literacy has been decidedly left out of our school’s postmodern agenda.

The problem is two-fold: it resides first in the academics of Macalester and second in the policies shaping how this campus is run. Academically, we are failing to educate the importance of ecological competence within our curriculum. Though we excel at analyzing the contemporary roles of class, gender, and race, to do so without acknowledging the inherent relationships between these concepts and environmental degradation is to do a great injustice to the problems we seek to take apart. If the role of this college is to teach us how to live well in the world, we cannot pretend that ecology is not central to other problems that we face. Because using the resources of the earth is a fundamental aspect of human survival, ecology plays a role in every discipline taught at Macalester.

We must study the world with a background in environmental integrity; we cannot achieve social justice without sustainability. To structure a curriculum otherwise is to advance the long-standing unsustainable paradigm of thought that has shaped the social and environmental injustice that surrounds us today.

As David Orr has said, a liberal arts education will, “foster a sense of connectedness, implicatedness, and ecological citizenship, and will provide the competence to act on that knowledge.” An understanding of environmental problems will help us approach the world from a broader, more accurate perspective.

Educational institutions process not just ideas and students, but resources as well. In this way, too, Macalester has failed to stand as an example of a better future. The independently contracted Document Services utilizes 300,000 sheets of zero percent recycled paper a year; our food is purchased with secret negotiations through Alliant Food Distributors; and our energy use (which, worldwide, accounts for 80 percent of total air pollution) is predominantly based on coal.

Environmental concerns are often marginalized on campus: for instance, last year, the head of recycling at Macalester was denied his request to place recycling bins at a central location in the new Campus Center simply because it would be unaesthetic. Instead of focusing on revamping our campus to raise our rankings, improving East Coast attendance and attracting low need students, strategic directions needs to place more emphasis on greening the campus to serve as an exemplary vision of a better future.

Our competitor schools have done so: Oberlin College has designed an entirely-self sufficient building, where even human wastewater is used as fertilizer for an indoor greenhouse. Beloit College buys locally produced food. Last May, Carleton’s Board of Trustees signed a statement stating that the college, “strives to be a model of stewardship for the environment by incorporating ideals of sustainability into the operations of the college.” While Macalester signed a similar international agreement called the Tallories declaration in 2000, no institutional policies have resulted from the declaration. In short, because a college educates the people that will run the institutions of the future, the college needs to be run well itself.

The crisis of sustainability is mounting every year, and Macalester College has the potential to be at the forefront of incorporating ecological literacy into its agenda, teaching these issues as innovatively as the others that are emphasized on this campus. Many faculty and staff have taken approaches in this direction; by following their lead, we can begin to re-shape our community to prepare us to be ecologically competent citizens.

Among student groups, MPIRG continues to push for green energy on campus, the Environmental Action Committee seeks to raise student awareness, and the Friends of Environmental Studies seeks to find institutional support for the underfunded Environmental Studies Department. Of course, because we have differing interests, not all students should be involved in these initiatives-but we do all need to be concerned about global environmental problems, foster ecological understanding in our classrooms, and practice environmental responsibility. Like all justice movements, it is a responsibility that rests with us all, and only by broad commitment can we bring about change.