The University of Connecticut Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new 10-year strategic plan for the university on Dec. 6, 2023, according to UConn Today. The plan is in service of three goals: promoting holistic student success, expanding research impact and powering a thriving Connecticut.
Progress on the plan, led by the Strategic Planning Steering Committee and containing four working groups concerning student success, research, local impact and implementation, will be measured against four Key Performance Indicators. As The Daily Campus Editorial Board has previously discussed, these will include achieving a six-year graduation rate of 90%, increasing the size of the university endowment to $1 billion, reaching carbon neutrality by 2030 and obtaining $500 million in research funding.
The Daily Campus Editorial Board certainly does not think aiming for carbon neutrality is a bad goal — far from it, achieving maximal sustainability is a moral and ethical imperative for this public land-grant university. However, too often when it comes to climate change UConn has provided far more promises than meaningful action.
While we agree with the university’s classification of climate change as “an existential threat,” University President Radenka Maric has still failed to release a comprehensive plan to achieve carbon neutrality.
The Daily Campus Editorial Board has covered UConn’s double standard when it comes to climate change. While rhetorically the university has routinely expressed alarm regarding climate change, their actions often contradict their words.
UConn’s Central Utility Plant is responsible for generating over 100,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually; however, the university has presented no real way to phase out this plant in the future. This plant remains open for the foreseeable future, undercutting the legitimacy of individualistic initiatives like the month-long EcoMadness challenge, which encourages students to reduce their water usage and overall waste. If the university was so worried about their impact on the environment they would first start by removing one of the largest sources of carbon emissions from campus and phasing in an alternative energy source. Reducing waste is a necessary cultural change that must be made in the United States writ large, but introducing the efficient technologies needed to precipitate these changes is a systemic, not individual, process.
In addition, UConn receives the majority of their power from Eversource, Connecticut’s largest power company who enjoys a geographic monopoly throughout Connecticut when it comes to providing fossil fuels.
There are also the countless partnerships that UConn holds with some of the world’s worst polluters, including Raytheon-sponsored career fairs, to the annual “Lockheed Martin Day” and million dollar donations to faculty members at the College of Engineering from Sikorsky. UConn’s close ties with several of the largest arms developers in the United States have been covered by The Daily Campus Editorial Board. Of the 195 countries in the world, the United States military alone ranks 47th in terms of yearly emissions.
The lack of oversight on the UConn Foundation has led to persistent allegations from climate activists that the school has directly and indirectly invested millions of dollars into fossil fuel companies from the university endowment.
UConn cannot have it both ways. You can’t claim on the one hand to be for a sustainable future while on the other hand accepting millions from the very companies doing the most damage to the environment. The Daily Campus Editorial Board believes that if the university really wants to reach their goal of carbon neutrality they should take a serious look at who some of their biggest donors are. UConn must end its paradoxical nature of claiming to want to do something about climate change while persistently accepting the money of the world’s worst polluters.