News-Letter

Student Council voted nearly unanimously on Tuesday to adopt a revised letter written by the Hopkins Energy Action Team (HEAT) calling on the University to enact policies that would make the Homewood Campus carbon-neutral by 2015."I'm so happy right now," said Teryn Norris-Hale, a freshman and co-leader of HEAT, to fellow members as they celebrated outside of the Council room. Norris-Hale acted as spokesperson during the meeting, fielding questions from the Council.

"Hopefully, the letter will just express to [the deans] that this is an issue on the minds of the students and important to us," said Laura Hansell, a senior and president of StuCo. "Essentially, it opens the dialog from between the administration and HEAT to potentially the administration and the student body, or at least student council."HEAT originally approached the Student Council to request their support earlier in the year, and were voted down. "There we some understandable concerns expressed by the student council, so we worked closely with them over the past months to draft a new letter," Norris-Hale said. "Now we have a draft we could all be happy with and are all proud to have just passed."

"The main issue was just that many people on Student Council were unfamiliar with the issue and didn't understand the enormous support this has from the student body," he said.

Laura Hansell, outgoing Student Council President, said that the major issue that council members had with the updated letter was the fact that it read "Sincerely, Student Council" at the bottom, although StuCo was not responsible for writing the letter. "We did this because we felt like it was not StuCo who drafted the letter, but HEAT," Hansell said. "Obviously the majority of StuCo agreed with what was written in the letter and felt like it should be passed on to Dean [of Student Life Susan] Boswell, [but] it is still not StuCo's issue."

"What I feel was so important was demonstrating to StuCo the unprecedented movement at Hopkins for policy change," Norris-Hale said. Part of this campaign for policy change involved the creation of petitions. "We have over 800 signatures and growing, and over 150 photo petitions. HEAT currently represents 20 student groups with over 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students."

"The letter still feels alarmist," said Will Pennant, the senior class Senator for Finance. He disagreed with the letter's claim that "scientific evidence concludes that our over-reliance on fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm at dangerous rates." Pennant said: "Global warming is not conclusive in the scientific community, and it's definitely not conclusive in the political community."

In response, Norris-Hale referenced a recent report stating with 90-percent certainty that humans are responsible for global warming. A report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reviewed by more than 2,500 scientists worldwide, stated that if current human activity continues at the same pace, ocean levels will rise somewhere between 7 and 23 inches over the next century.

The motion was then made to change the language of the letter from "the scientific evidence concludes" to "the scientific evidence suggests". The motion was defeated after a narrow vote of 13 to 14, with two members abstaining. Pennant said that perhaps Student Council could present the letter to the University administration with a separate letter stating the Council felt it would be important for the deans to look at this issue.

Other council members disagreed with Pennant. "I feel like we'd be diluting our power on campus," junior Zach Moor said. "We already struggle with being seen as mediators and facilitators instead of a source of power."

"In my opinion, StuCo does carry weight with the administration, and we're fully aware of this so we try to take that responsibility seriously," Hansell said. "I think Zach was saying that we need to try and assess how the student body felt about the issue, regardless of how we individually felt."

"Dean Boswell has given us 100 percent support, and we have support from over 2,000 kids on campus. She said that we need the support of the Student Council to show the other deans that this is serious," Norris-Hale said. He and Blake Hough, a senior and co-head of HEAT, had met the day before with Boswell and President Brody's executive assistant, Jerry Schnydman. "He was very supportive," Norris-Hale said, who stated that Schnydman's only concerns were "cost and feasibility."

Another council member suggested adding sources to the letter to help HEAT's cause. Norris-Hale noted that the previous letter had included such information, but members of StuCo had expressed concerns about signing onto such a letter if they themselves had not reviewed the data sources.

The final vote of 27 to 1 in favor of supporting the letter, with Pennant voting against and Hansell abstaining, was met with applause by both council members and the dozen HEAT representatives who attended the meeting. Pennant declined to comment further on his position. As StuCo president, Hansell said she is "constitutionally obliged to abstain in all votes except in the event of a tie."

Hansell sent an electronic copy of the letter with the council's notation of support to Dean Boswell today.

Upcoming HEAT events include co-hosting the Phi Kappa Psi beach party and a rally to be held on the Beach next Tuesday, where author Mike Tidwell, founder and leader of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, will speak on the role of college students in finding solutions to climate change.

Norris-Hale said that major action, however, still remains in the hands of the administration, who will make their decision in mid-April as the letter explains. "The opportunity to demonstrate leadership and responsibility is right now. Scientists say that if we are to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change we must stabilize emissions. The community and the press are looking for the administration to act."

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