I am writing in response to the April 7 issue of the Technician’s editorial entitled “Organizations’ sustainability initiatives fall flat.” 

As a student of N.C. State and the Sustainability Director of Student Government, I am disappointed by the dismissive nature of this article. First, I would like to address two main flaws with the article.

1) It seems that the Office of Sustainability and the Student Government Sustainability Commission are not clear to your editorial staff. To clarify, this is the first year that the Office of Sustainability has contributed monetarily to Think Outside the Brick and it is staff-driven.  The Sustainability Commission created Think Outside the Brick in the 2009-2010 academic year and is composed of students only.

2) Student Government promises funding and support of the winning proposals, not a promise of implementation. Implementation is the winning of student’s responsibility. On another note, funding falls under the stipulation of a May 1 purchasing deadline of which all winners were informed after being chosen as Think Outside the Brick winners.

Moving on, the success of one of this year’s runner ups, Kyle Barth, and his hall light timer proposal are entirely left out this skewed representation of Think Outside the Brick. Because of Kyle’s initial goal to outfit Bagwell Hall with hall light timers, University Housing doubled the $500 awarded by Think Outside the Brick and outfitted the entire Quad with these timers. This is a prime example of a self-motivated student that has his heart and soul invested into his proposal and demonstrated swift results. It seems remiss to omit such a success story.

On a rational note, this is the second year of the program. Flaws are expected and kinks have yet to be worked out. Is this any surprise to not have a seamless system in a mere two years, where I might add, the winners were tripled from the first year?

The Technician seems so hasty to throw out a program that is attempting to close the gap between University staff and students. 

Not only have Student Government and the Office of Sustainability spent hours with the winning students supporting their proposals, but also our University Landscape Architects Tom Skolnicki and Lisa Johnson, as well as Pete Fraccaroli and Barry Olson with University Housing. These are University staff members that have been wrongfully blamed for the reason why some Think Outside the Brick projects have a difficult time getting implemented.

The real reason is this: ultimately it is up to the winning students to make their proposals a reality. Student Government and the Office of Sustainability give them all the tools to do so.  Some students have an easier time than others depending on the nature of their proposals. Building or manipulating structures on campus takes time and effort.

All parties mentioned would appreciate for the Technician to not interfere further with the Think Outside the Brick process as all of our time has been wasted this past week dealing with your publication when we are focusing on the success of our remaining projects.

Rachel Conley

senior, fisheries and wildlife sciences