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May 2007 - The Greening of SMC |
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Stories and pictures by Martin Goldstein For a brief and shining moment a few weeks ago, all of Santa Monica was present and accounted for, uniting around one inclusive theme, the greening of SMC. Among those present at the “Eco-Fabulous” event on Tuesday, April 24 were Santa Monica Mayor Richard Bloom, SMC President Chuie Tsang, City Council member Kevin McKeun, SMC Trustees Louise Jaffee and David Finkel, leaders of the Faculty Association, the Academic Senate, CSEA, the administration and multitudes of students as well as other assorted community members. Everyone was there. |  | Bull's-eye! Dr. Tsang follows through after dropping Academic Senate President Richard Tahvildaran in the dunk tank. | The event was co-sponsored by the Associated Students, Eco Action, Sustainable Works, and the Center for Environmental and Urban Studies, and is difficult to recall a prior event that attracted such a wide range of support. and from the speeches that were made, it feels that this was not mere lip service, but rather the beginning of a long-term serious dedication to re-imagining our school as an eco-friendly place. Talk about tipping points; we've tipped.
Busing It
Carrying a paper model of a Big Blue Bus, President Tsang discussed the recent agreement to have all SMC students ride the bus free, just by showing their SMC ID card, with additional arrangements being made to make the experience easier and more convenient. Using public transportation and reducing the school's dependence on cars to get to the campus is a good initial step towards reducing our collective carbon footprint here at SMC. The future of SMC, we believe, must be an increasingly carless one, and the sooner we get there the better. It's not just the neighbors in Sunset Park we have to worry about from now on; it's the planet itself. We don't need more parking; we need fewer cars and better public transportation to replace it.
Going Solar
Solar energy panels on every building at SMC, making enough electricity to be self-sustaining, is not a pipe dream any more, but a plan discussed by Dr. Tsang and several of the Trustees. Throwing away sunshine is like running fresh water into the sewers; it's wasting a precious resource. We should be a model for the community of how to reduce, reuse and recycle here at SMC. We should be an example of how it should be done, and going solar is a good place to start.
Collegetown
A dream that is going to require long and continuous level of across-the-board support to happen – which it very well might get – is a SMC stop on the light rail line coming to the Westside in the next 10-15 years. It seems unlikely that stop would be at our current Main Campus site, but the thought of a subway letting people off at Santa Monica College Station, and the development of a Collegetown community around that station, with housing for international students, maybe faculty and others, is starting to gain citywide traction these days.
It's an enormous task, creating a low carbon footprint Collegetown area, carless, green, walkable and culturally diverse – but it sounds like something Santa Monica could imagine, and something Santa Monica could and should do. This town is getting increasingly expensive and increasingly homogeneous, while a large and fruitful source of cultural diversity commutes in and out every day to the College, leaving practically no mark in the community at large.
If Santa Monica wants to restore the cultural diversity we have cherished for decades, the only way to do it is to “capture” some of it from the College. It's here, let's find a way to have it put roots down in the city, and connect it to public transit from the rest of community. If you plant it, it will grow.
It would take the College and SMRR and the Chamber of Commerce and the communities involved and the MTA (Chaired now by Pam O'Conner, third term member of the SM City Council) and many others players to make this happen over the next decade and a half. But it would be the natural outgrowth of our current greening, the logical evolution of our college as a shining example of local community and global ecological vision.
It's so Santa Monica, and, we believe, so Santa Monica College.
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