To President Rose, Dean Scanlon, the Bowdoin Board of Trustees and the Campus Planning Committee,
The Campus Master Plan is an opportunity to dream big about the Bowdoin that we bequeath to future generations. As Campus Planning Committee member Grace Butler ’16 summarized, this is an opportunity in which we consider “our values as a community and how [they] translate into the built environment.” Knowing that continued reliance on fossil fuels will cause enormous economic disruption, social destabilization and ecological catastrophes, we should place sustainability at the heart of all building decisions.
We urge you, the leaders of campus development, to make deeper investments in sustainable infrastructure. The College has committed to carbon neutrality by 2020. This commitment is beyond debate, but reaching that goal is very challenging. The surest way to avoid failure is by requiring that every addition to the campus adds no carbon. Such “net-zero” buildings are increasingly common and represent a minimum standard for Bowdoin to adopt in ground-up construction.
Bowdoin exists to educate its extraordinary students and serve the Common Good. Bowdoin is much more than a collection of buildings, but net-zero buildings can be superb educational tools. Simply by existing and being overtly carbon-free, these buildings will raise awareness and instruct. If Bowdoin chooses a less sustainable path forward, we’re also educating our students, but with lessons inconsistent with the Offer of the College.
We applaud the new Roux Center for the Environment as a site of interdisciplinary collaboration and, in President Rose’s words, “new and enhanced engagement with… stewardship of the environment.” The Roux Center itself is part of that engagement and must reflect the highest standards of energy efficiency and low carbon. LEED Standards do not meet this need. Instead, the Roux Center should be built as the first net-zero facility at Bowdoin and one of the first in New England.
We live in a crucial time for both the College and society as a whole. We look to you for leadership.
David Vail, Adams-Catlin Professor of Economics, Emeritus
Nathaniel Wheelwright, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Natural Sciences /Chair of the Department of Biology
Tricia Welsch, Professor of Cinema Studies
Madeleine Msall, Professor of Physics
Bruce Kohorn, Linnean Professor of Biology and Biochemistry /Director of Biochemistry Program
Mary Hunter, A. LeRoy Greason Professor of Music
Hadley Horch,
Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience and Director of Neuroscience Program
Laura Henry
John F. and Dorothy H. Magee Associate Professor of Government/Acting Chair of Russian Department
Nadia Celis, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Mark Battle, Associate Professor of Physics