For a campus as involved in the sustainability movement as the University of Oregon is, its heart — the EMU — isn’t very efficient or sustainable. According to EMU Interim Director Wendy Polhemus, the green issue is one of the most important dilemmas facing the student union.@@name checked@@
“You can just see energy going out in the wintertime,” Polhemus said, referring to the glass-enclosed Skylight Lounge section of the EMU that’s slated to be replaced if the most recently proposed EMU Expansion Project moves ahead. “Everyone loves all the glass overhead – but it’s single-pane. It’s awful.”
It’s not just the glass, either. Everything from antiquated electrical layouts to multiple different fire systems that don’t communicate with one another add together for one highly inefficient building, she said — and none of these issues are new.
Yet, despite an ongoing lack of sustainability and other issues — such as a lack of space for student programs, limited hours of operation and aging facilities — students have twice voted down referendums that would have used student fees to help fund the EMU renovations. Part of the reason behind that, Polhemus said, has been a failure to communicate with students.
ASUO Sen. Ian Needham, director of the EMU Expansion Project task force, agrees.
“We didn’t (engage students) at all in the past,” Needham said, citing a lack of organization within those pushing for the renovations as a key problem. “The first referendum wasn’t organized at all, and the second one kind of was, but it wasn’t implemented very well.”
The solution is a combination of things, from forming the task force itself to making sure students are more directly aware of what the project would entail.@@what the problems are…is it worth putting funds into the project vs. not. i.e., describe in detail what all the problems are@@ The latter effort was most recently reflected in diagrams found around the EMU depicting in detail what the EMU would look like after the Expansion Project was completed.@@what will the project DO, what will it FIX, what are the current problems, and is it worth keeping vs replacing@@
Some students, like sophomore Garrett Watkins,@@name checked@@ understand first-hand the need behind the project.
“The EMU we have now does not support the number of programs a school our size needs to run,” Watkins said,@@not enough@@ who works for EMU Event Services and is responsible for helping run events held in the union.
However, he also says that one of the biggest issues many students have with the project has yet to be addressed and may not be surmountable at all — the fact that the vast majority of those who would be footing the bill would never benefit from it. He’s also not entirely sure what can be done about it, though he does have an idea.
“If they were to put it in the (referendum) that the charging of students didn’t start until the freshmen that would be using (it) came in, that would help,” Watkins said. “That way, the people voting would be the ones that benefited.”@@isnt that a bit disenfranchising?@@