“Meh.”
“Futile.”
“Who gives a sh*t?”
“What is that?”
- Responses given by Brownies (Brown College students) to the anonymous survey question: “What are your feelings towards water conservation in Brown?”
This year Brown College featured a short-course called “How Green is Your Brown?” promising scavenger hunts and revelry in the brief course description. We were only too eager to sign up. But upon taking the class we discovered, to the surprise and even dismay of some, that this was not going to be a joke of a one-credit class. The purpose of the class was going to be actual research into Brown College’s sustainability. The seven students were broke up into two teams, each focusing on a specific aspect of sustainability that students have a direct impact on: food and water.
The investigations began immediately. Team Food creeped around the dish return in Newcomb while Team Water invaded resident’s bathrooms and showers, photographing the mold and leaking faucets that seem to plague Brown indiscriminately of portal or gender assignment. We also went on several field trips during the semester. The first was a behind-the-scenes tour of Runk dining hall, where we learned how our food is prepared, and quite as importantly, how it is discarded. We then visited the current construction happening at Ragged Mountain Dam, giving us a new perspective on where exactly Charlottesville is getting its water.
We continued throughout the semester to do outside research on how these sustainability issues were ubiquitous to the entire globe, as well as interview professors and knowledgeable persons in our field of interest to learn more about what we could do as students to face these problems. We paired this with surveys of the Brown community and observations throughout the building in order to create a brief case study on water consumption and conservation in Brown College. The findings for Team Water are as follows:
When it comes to water, Brown College has two main problems: apathy and a serious need for renovation. When given an open-ended question on feelings about water conservation, most Brownies had no strong feelings about the subject, with an overwhelming response of “meh”. The most important thing our team has gathered is that there is a serious need for education on the matter of water waste for our residents. Furthermore, in the survey 50 percent of Brownies claimed to have leaks in their bathrooms that have gone unreported. This is a completely unnecessary waste that in most cases could be solved within 24 hours by simply filling out a work order. But it also ties in with the sheer inefficiency of Brown’s current plumbing system. The tunnel floods of earlier this year make the need for renovation an unquestionable reality. Most dorms on Grounds are equipped with innovations like dual flush toilets, aerators, and are quite simply “new and improved”. We realize that a renovation in the magnitude that Brown needs would be a massive project, necessitating a large budget in the sense of both time and money. Until that time we believe that the most important thing is to promote awareness on the issue and foster a sense of responsibility among residents.
Yet, even with all the many problems Brown College faces, we are actually in a period of decreased water consumption. When comparing water-use records from 2012 and 2013 there has been a yearly total decrease of about 2,000,000 gallons. That’s almost 40 percent less water used than 2012. Causes have not been clearly discerned, but we are hoping to do our best to help this trend continue in the future. In such a unique and tight-knit community, we believe anything is possible, and that as intelligent and motivated students we can come together and make a difference.
Our question is no longer “How Green is your Brown?” Our question is “How green will you be for your Brown?”
Ariel Herman, Virginia Mathurin, Caitlin Muir and Alex Weaver are Brown College residents and members of “Team Water.”
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