Environmental Awareness Group to Pursue 'Green Fund'

The George Mason University Environmental Awareness Group, which in the spring semester will be known as the Environmental Action Group, is petitioning the school to establish a Mason Green Fund. The fund would utilize money from a new student fee to help the university meet its environmental goals and reduce campus carbon emissions.

The money collected from the fund—which would be drawn from a proposed student fee of $5 per semester for each student—would be controlled by a majority-student committee charged with deciding how to disburse the moneys.

The 13-member committee on sustainability would be composed of 7 students and 6 faculty, staff, or administration officials.

Environmental Awareness Group president Lauren Peery said that university officials have been receptive but that they wish to get a better sense of overall student opinion before instituting another an additional fee.

“[School officials] are supportive of the idea,” Peery said. “They just have to know that students are supportive. We recently had 1,000 students fill out pledge cards in support of the idea, but given the size of the student body the school said that what 1,000 people said wasn’t representative.”

Peery said that her group would launch what she called a “major initiative” to garner student backing for the plan.

“Five dollars is what you would pay for a Venti latte from Starbucks,” she joked. “It’s nothing.”

One option that she raised was making a PatriotWeb survey on the subject of the fund a mandatory prerequisite to register for classes. A previous, voluntary survey yielded only several hundred responses.