Last spring, the members of Go Green Alliance held a referendum asking the student body a simple yes or no question: Would you pay $3 to fund an Office of Sustainability?  

More than 80 percent of voting students supported the proposed “green fee,” which aims to make campus more energy efficient and sustainable. 

“Sustainability initiatives require funding, and the University wasn’t going to fund them,” said Mark Milby, co-chair of the Go Green Alliance. “We kind of got shot down a few times, so we decided to do our own fee because we thought the student support was enough to merit it.” 

The purpose of implementing the green fee is to create a “green initiative fund” in the Office of Sustainability. If students or faculty members have an idea for making an aspect of the University more sustainable, they can apply to the office in order to receive money for their project. 

“There’s going to be a fund through which students can receive this funding fairly quickly and without the red tape and bureaucracy of a typical administration,” Milby said. 

The green fee will first be collected in the fall, and

Milby said he estimates the fee will raise approximately $170,000 per year.  

However, green fees are not a new idea. 

Approximately 100 green fees are now in place in universities around the country, and Milby said the University’s green fee was modeled after schools such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

At UNC, the organization spearheading the campus’ green initiatives is the Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee.

“We have a lot of schools that contact us about the green fee,” said Erin Hiatt, the committee’s co-chair. “The reason I believe this has been so successful is because we meet with advisers that have been really prominent in the community at UNC. It adds a whole level of credibility to it because we have people within the administration backing up our projects.” 

UNC also held a referendum, and in the spring of 2003, the university passed a $4 green fee, which raises about $200,000 per year.  

One of UNC’s projects is placing solar panels on top of dormitories. The UNC committee is also looking at technology that would turn the lights and fans off in elevators when they aren’t in use.

“Traditionally, our group was only allowed to use funds towards actual physical renewal energy projects,” Hiatt said. “Now, the energy-efficiency component has really been what’s made us particularly useful to the school because we’re doing projects that have much faster payback.”

Though the University followed in UNC’s footsteps, Georgia Tech is closely looking at the University’s moves. 

Four semesters ago, Georgia Tech’s Students Organizing for Sustainability program sent out surveys to students asking them how much money they would devote to a green fee.

“We got a really good response from the students, but we were told by our Student Government Association that it wasn’t going to be possible because the Board of Regents wasn’t going to approve it, so that kind of stopped us dead in our tracks,” said Molly McLaughlin, vice-president of SOS. “But now that we found out UGA has just passed a green fee, we’re all pretty excited because that means if the Board of Regents hasn’t stopped you, that means they won’t stop us either.”

Although Georgia Tech already has an Office of Sustainability, McLaughlin said the office just does procedural things. The members of SOS want a fee to fund some of the projects they have in mind.

She said the surveys indicated students would be willing to pay an average of $8, but she does not think the fee would end up being nearly as much due to the financial climate.

University of Virginia students have proposed the establishment of a “Green Initiative Funding Tomorrow,” which would support green initiative projects proposed by students and faculty. A few years ago, the committee proposed a $5 fee from students, but the attempt failed.

“While over 90 percent of the student body was in favor of the fee, the administration was not comfortable with this process,” said Thushara Gunda, a member of UVA’s Environmental Sustainability Committee. “We want to make sure we won’t be imposing an additional economic burden.” 

The committee is now thinking of different ideas to propose to the administration. One includes asking the administration to reallocate some of the unused fees students pay in the beginning of the year toward a sustainability fund, and Gunda said she  believes good communication between students and faculty is a must. 

“The way we’re envisioning it, it wouldn’t be purely a student project,” she said. “We would promote projects that show collaboration between students and university staff.” 

At the University, collaboration has effectively allowed students to institute a green fee, and Milby is looking forward to students working closely with the Office of Sustainability.  

“It’s such a little price for such a good thing for the University in the long run,” Milby said. “Personally, I feel like this office is a great resource for the University, and it really puts us in the league of other top universities around the country.”