Stewart pursues sustainability initiative based on student feedback

For most students, November brings the thought of the semester finishing, exams starting, and the winter break setting in.

But MSU President Siobhan Stewart has her sights set on the spring.

Stewart’s green roof initiative, a project designed to convert the third-floor balcony of the McMaster University Student Centre into an eco-friendly sitting area and garden, is on track to be completed for next summer. The project was a key platform point of her 2012 presidential campaign.

Green roofs have been growing in popularity at universities and other institutions across Canada. Stewart explained that the inspiration for the green roof  at Mac came from two students who were involved with OPIRG, who proposed the project three years ago.

The idea of converting an already existing space into a more workable and sustainable place was an appealing choice for McMaster for a number of reasons, among them the concern of an overpopulated campus with too little public space.

“Students are always talking about the need for space on campus,” said Stewart. “And as many can imagine, new buildings don’t sprout up every day.”

She noted that part of McMaster’s unique situation is that campus is “landlocked,” bordered by residential neighbourhoods on three sides and Cootes Paradise on the other.

Mac student Melanie Fox-Chen is also passionate about the green roof project. The fourth-year biology student was an intern at McMaster’s Office of Sustainability this summer, and spent her term investigating the best practices of green roofs. The advantages of such a project are numerous, she found.

“It maximizes the usable amount of space on campus, which is really good,” Fox-Chen explained. “It just provides a green space where students can seek to relax and unwind from a stressful day.”

Her research, which looked into a range of issues, including food production, plant life, rainwater collection, and community involvement, was used to create a survey that was given to students this summer.

The feedback from the survey, which drew 600 responses, was used in drawing up further plans for the project. The responses showed that the majority of people would appreciate a “calm, soothing environment,” while they also indicated support for edible plants to be grown, as well as species native to Southern Ontario.

Stewart stressed this element of student feedback as a means of making decisions.

“I’ve been trying to consult a lot with students. From an efficiency standpoint [it’s not ideal]… I could have just put everything together, but that’s not my style.”

Only so much progress can be made on the roof at this point, however. The organizers may have a sense of what people want, but before any construction happens, the MSU must wait while the project is out to tender.

“It’s not like the MSU can just get a shovel and go to town. It doesn’t work like that,” Stewart said in explaining the process of getting university approval.

The next phase is choosing a plan for the space. The MSU, in partnership with Facility Services, invited eight architects to submit proposals for their services in October. The team chose a firm to contract out for the work, and will now see three more specific sets of plans drawn up. Before a final design is chosen, Stewart will seek further student feedback.

It is not clear whether or not the roof will be completed by the end of the academic year, Stewart said.

“My goal is at least for it have been started before the end of my term, or for all of the logistics to be done…so all it would take would be a green light.”

Even as students have been breaching the barrier of the campus “bubble” in the past few years, many community social issues, both good and bad, remain under the average student’s radar.

The Vital Signs Report, released on Oct. 12 by the Hamilton Community Foundation, sought to shed light on community strengths and challenges through measuring the quality of life in Hamilton across 12 issue areas.

The report created three levels of concern through which community members could evaluate community issues. The Vital Signs Advisory Committee and several members of Hamilton Roundtable compiled the report for Poverty Reduction. Internet and telephone surveys randomly sampled various households across the city.

Across the board, survey responses noted that there was satisfaction with the community’s approach to addressing issues in “arts and culture,” “getting around (transportation)” and “the environment”.

The community was urged to take immediate action towards addressing the “gap between the rich and the poor” and “work-related issues.”

The most staggering and prominent finding in the report indicates the continued increase in number of people working full-time yet still living below the poverty line in Hamilton. The most recent data available, from 2006, shows that 6.7 per cent of Hamilton’s population is in this category. This average is a marked increase from both the Ontario average (5.5 per cent) and the Canadian average (5.8 per cent).

The gap between the rich and the poor, a major focal point for the Occupy movement, has persisted in Hamilton, mirroring larger national trends. In 2009, the poorest 20 per cent of Hamiltonians had 5 per cent of the total income, while the richest 20 per cent accounted for 41 per cent of the total income.

The report takes into account all the neighbourhoods across Hamilton, including the Westdale-Ainsley Wood area.

McMaster students were not specifically identified in the report. However, community engagement has been at the forefront of campus affairs. Community was a major part of McMaster president Patrick Deane’s visioning letter “Forward With Integrity.”

Siobhan Stewart, MSU President, emphasized the variety of ways in which students choose to engage in community affairs, especially through various MSU services and clubs.

“People find their own channel and have their own unique story about what community engagement means to them.”

Stewart also noted that there is increased mindfulness towards including both community and student opinion on Hamilton’s social issues.

Several McMaster professors and employees are actively involved in the Poverty Roundtable and have advocated for university involvement and projects to address social justice issues in Hamilton.

Gary Warner, former Director of the Arts & Science Program, past Chair of the Hamilton Community Foundation and Poverty Roundtable member, reflected on student knowledge of Hamilton’s inequalities.

“I think students are likely not aware of the impact of income disparity related to postal codes in Hamilton, which is reflected, for example, in vastly different life expectancy – 21-year gap – and in test results and gradation rates in Hamilton's secondary schools.”

The McMaster Poverty Initiative (MPI) is the most notable example of the call for collaboration between students, staff and faculty to examine Hamilton’s social justice issues.

Jeff Wingard, MPI Coordinator and a member of the Vital Signs Report team, remarked upon the increase in student awareness and engagement with the community, especially in exploring the community’s booming arts scene.

“[But] I think on the flip side ... there are deep pockets of poverty and real hardship that exist in Hamilton, which I think get a bit lost if you don’t see it [on campus]”

Wingard also spoke about the need for continued research on community inequalities and the equal importance of communicating this research to diverse audiences, including students and the populations being studied.

McMaster has a reputation of being both a research-intensive institution and school with a strong spirit of volunteerism and community engagement, most recently exemplified by events such as Open Streets McMaster and MacServe.

Warner suggested that in keeping with the recommendations made by the Forward With Integrity Community Engagement Task Force, McMaster should strive to assign higher value to community-engaged research.

Andrew Terefenko

Opinions Editor

 

“So long, and thanks for all the breaths.” Canadians, get used to adding this phrase to your daily diction in a decade, if this dastardly decision is not dismantled.

Environment Canada is pulling scientists away from monitoring the air pollution in various regions of Canada. They claim it is to assign them to “other priorities,” which are unnamed, but given that last year EC feared that as many as 700 jobs would be affected by budget cuts, those other priorities are likely more financially suitable for the organization. It’s a bad omen to consider any priorities higher than those of clean, breathable air.

This move did not come without criticism, of course, as many global environment research leaders strongly discouraged EC from going forward with this plan, but to no avail.

This move might very well knock Canada off it’s perch as a forerunner in environmental research, given our country’s diverse ecology and relatively low levels of smog, among major world capitals.

In addition to losing valuable smog-fighting manpower, EC has also shut down five of six total light ranging stations across Canada that have been integral to evaluating the damage done by airborne fossil fuel emissions. It is outrageous to think that facilities that exist solely the further the greater health of the Canadian populace are lying dormant across Canada, with easily operated equipment gathering dust at the cost of our successors’ livelihoods.

If you want a window into tomorrow’s Canada in this grey new world, look no further than the media’s smog staple, Beijing. Just under a year ago, Beijing air pollution was far above standard measurable levels, and citizens were urged to stay indoors, as even an hour outside would be a severe health risk. It is an example of a city that decided to fight air pollution only once it was a readily visible and immediate problem, and given that the city boasts an average of two days a week of blue skies, the fight was started a little too late.

This is the dilemma that I feel our nation is facing. We are reprioritizing the problem of pollution because it is not in our faces, screwing with our 2012 daily routine, which seems to be a requirement for meaningful popular support.

Worst yet is that we do not know what Environment Canada’s plan is moving forward. We have yet to hear what these “other priorities” are, which might help in defending their universally detestable decision. Their spokesman has also come forward to assure the world that EC will “still [provide] world class analysis,” which seems like a tall order for a recently downsized organization with less manpower in the field after today.

What is truly incomprehensible is the theory that these scientists have been relocated to the oil sands and other potential fuel-bearing regions as a measure in bolstering Canada’s export economy and evaluating the risk of environmental damage caused by new drilling maneuvers. Would that not be contributing to the problem instead of remedying it?

We have more immediate problems; that much I can comprehend. There is a global financial crisis that we are obligated to tread about carefully. There is ongoing strife in the Middle East that we are expected to combat. There are twenty thousand metric Rob Fords of garbage that have no place to go while we pad the ground with it. No doubt additional problems will surface while those persist, as is their tendency. But there will always be other problems. Now is not the time to shelve the importance of our gaseous lifeline.

We breathe what we sow, and at the moment the seeds we are spreading are awfully grey.