Tag: college campuses

Ugly Bikes a Better Alternative to Cars?

  • Community bike projects are springing up in cities and college campuses across North America. The idea - ride a bike when you can avoid driving a car. They're old and made intentionally ugly so people won't steal them. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

America is a cult of the automobile. We drive everywhere. You can pick up a donut and coffee in the morning, a burger in the afternoon and a six-pack of beer at night and never leave your car. But some environmentally-conscious people want us to leave the car in the garage. And they’re offering us old, ugly bikes instead. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:

Transcript

America is a cult of the automobile. We drive everywhere. You can pick up a donut and coffee in
the morning, a burger in the afternoon and a six pack of beer at night and never leave your car. But
some environmentally-conscious people want us to leave the car in the garage. And they’re offering
us old, ugly bikes instead. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports:


(bike bell)


These bikes are old, and they are ugly. But the Michigan
State University Bike Project isn’t worried about how its
bikes look. That’s unless they’re not ugly enough.


These kinds of creaky, old bikes were abandoned long
ago for bikes with gears, handle brakes and cool brand
names. Once they’re taken in, these old bikes are painted
a bright canary yellow – really ugly.


But that’s what the bike project’s organizers want. The
bikes just need to work, but not too well. They need to
stick out, but not in a good way.


Tim Potter says, the less desirable the better.


“We don’t want to make them look too good, because
we don’t want people taking them home and keeping
them. So we try to make them intentionally ugly and
very identifiable.”


Potter says they want people to borrow the bikes, but
they don’t want them to keep them. He helped launch
the project last May. They wanted to give Michigan
State students and professors a free and non-
polluting way to get across campus.


“We just want to encourage more people to use
bicycles to reduce traffic, to reduce pollution, and to
improve their health.”


At Michigan State, the bikes are leased to campus
departments and signed out for daily use.


Gus Gosselin rides one of these old yellow bikes in
the bitter cold of winter and the dead heat of summer.
He and Potter have been working on the bikes ever
since Gosselin brought the idea back from Canada.


“I was vacationing in a cabin in northern Ontario and
my neighbor was a bicycle shop owner from
Virginia. He told me that at his university when he
was a college student, they would take these
abandoned bikes and paint ’em some color, and then
just park ’em all around for people to just use as
needed.”


Similar programs have sprung up across North America.
At other campuses like Hampshire College in
Massachusetts and the University of Texas. And in cities
such as Portland, Oregon, and St. Paul, Minnesota.


Before the concept came to North America, there
were community bike programs all across Europe.
Most U.S. bike programs use yellow to distinguish
their bikes. Amsterdam and Copenhagen use white.
Regardless of color, the concept remains the same:
Use a bike when you can avoid using a car.


The Michigan State bike project is just getting
started.


Across Lake Michigan in Wisconsin’s capitol, the
Red Bike Project is approaching its sixth birthday.


The program here started when a bike shop decided
to donate free recycled bikes to the city of Madison.
Now the bikes are in for their winter repairs.
Dismantled red frames sit on the floor in the back of
the shop. They’re waiting for a new paint job and
wheels.


“For the first three years the bicycles were
completely free so they’d be launched as it were like
on Earth Day in April. And then as we repaired and
painted more, we launched more. They would go
people could hop on them, leave them anywhere.”


Roger Charly owns the bike shop that started
painting and distributing the bikes. He says the
University of Wisconsin students drive the program.
And he says Madison is a biking town. It was ripe
for a community bike project.


The project caught on, but in unexpected ways, says
Charly.


“You know at bar time down on campus you hear
people arguing about, ‘that’s my red bike or I’m
riding this red bike home.'”


And Charly says the arguments for the bikes weren’t
the only problem. He says sometimes, bikes would
end up in the nearby lake, or people would ride them
outside the city and abandon them.


So, he had to make riders put a deposit on their bike.
It gave them more responsibility. And Charly says
the program has flourished.


“Our fleet is about 300 bicycles right now which is
the most its ever been, so I suppose we could top out
at as many as 1000 bicycles.”


But there are 400,000 people in the Madison area.
So, a thousand red bikes might seem like a rather
pedestrian numbers to consider a success.


But these projects don’t have lofty goals of
converting an automobile society to one of bike
riders.


Back in Michigan, the yellow bike project has 25
bikes for a campus of more than 40,000. Terry Link
organizes the Michigan State Bike Project. He says
they would be happy to have 100 bikes by spring.


“Yeah, I think sometimes we look for the big changes
and we don’t tackle things because we such very
little in the ocean of change that maybe we feel we
need. But it’s individual actions that really start. I
think people that find themselves getting on bicycles
more, it changes the way they look at a lot of things.”


And Link thinks a community bike program can work
anywhere.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Corbin
Sullivan.

Repelling Christmas Tree Thieves

  • Landscape Manager Jeff Culbertson sprays a Scots pine with thief repellant containing fox urine. The smell isn't too noticeable outdoors... but when a thief drags a conifer indoors, the repellant heats up and makes for a memorable Christmas. Photo by Nanci Ann McIntosh, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Evergreen trees grace forests, campuses, and lawns around the region. Much to the dismay of landscapers and gardeners, some of those trees disappear this time of year, stolen by someone who may not quite get the idea of Christmas cheer. But some universities have found a way to fight tree rustlers. It involves a foul-smelling concoction that makes thieves regret taking a tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the recipe for this nasty, yet effective repellant:

Transcript

Evergreen trees grace forests, campuses, and lawns around the region. And much to the dismay of landscapers and gardeners, some of those trees disappear this time of year, stolen by someone who may not quite get the idea of Christmas cheer. But some universities have found a way to fight tree-rustlers. It involves a foul-smelling concoction that makes thieves regret taking a tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the recipe for this nasty, yet effective repellant:


About fifteen years ago, landscape managers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln had a big problem. Tree thieves were cutting down the best conifers on campus. And the landscapers were getting calls from local residents, whose trees were also disappearing. Dennis Adams is a forester at the University of Nebraska.


“It’d be, you know, trees that have good Christmas tree form, so blue spruce, concolor fir, some of the pines – white pine, scotch pine.”


Some thieves were easy to track. Jeff Culbertson is a landscape manager at the university. He says students were stealing trees during Thanksgiving break… and they weren’t always perfect criminals…


“We’ve had instances where the students, I guess didn’t do a good job or didn’t think anybody cared, but you could find the dragged marks of the tree through the snow to their fraternity or dormitory or something like that so in those cases I think it was pretty easy for them to figure out where the tree went.”


Campus trees are worth hundreds of dollars, so the university was eager to find a solution. Dennis Adams discovered a solution… literally. He found the recipe in an old magazine… 1 part glycerine, 10 parts water, and 2 parts… fox urine.


Jeff Culbertson says the fox urine makes Christmas tree thieves think twice…


“It doesn’t really smell like skunk. Maybe like an extremely strong cat urine sort of smell. Or dog, something that’s very concentrated. But you know normally you’re not going to smell that. So it’s pretty pungent.”


Culbertson says since the University of Nebraska began spraying conifers in the 80s, they haven’t lost many trees. He sprays 50 to 100 Christmas-tree size evergreens each year. He used to wear a plastic spray suit, but now he just keeps the wind at his back.


“When I do the fox urine, I don’t have many volunteers that want to help me with that. So I take on upon myself to do it. They mostly stand away from me, and they probably don’t talk to me too much that day either.”


Culbertson says there is one problem with this technique… when it’s cold out, you don’t notice the smell. So he started adding a dye… he sprays blue or red stripes on the trees where he sprays the fox urine. He says it makes the trees that much less attractive, and serves as a warning. And each year, the university lets the local papers know they’re spraying fox urine again.


But if a thief still chops down a tree and drags it into his house … Culbertson says he won’t likely do it again.


“It would be a smell that you’d have a hard time getting rid of.”


Culbertson recommends the method to anyone with a lot of trees to protect. He says the repellant is pretty affordable, and normally wears off after the Christmas season. Most of the supplies, sometimes even fox urine, can be bought at a garden store.


“I use a small, 3 gallon bottle sprayer, typical sort of garden sprayer people would purchase at the hardware store, garden center… And I try to use hot water. The glycerin is very syrupy kind of like corn syrup. So it helps to loosen it up, heat it up and make it less thick. I mix it up, take it out, and just spray the trees by hand.”


Both Jeff Culbertson and Dennis Adams think thieves are just looking for a cheap tree. But Adams still finds the thefts a little unbelievable.


“I think people have to be pretty desperate to steal a tree for Christmas. That seems like it’s kind of in the anti-Christmas spirit to steal.” (Laughs)


Other campus managers, meanwhile…have cooked up their own people repellant. The University of Idaho adds a few ounces of skunk scent. It makes their mix even more memorable.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

COLLEGES FAILING GREEN TEST? (Part 1)

College campuses were once thought to be hotbeds for environmental activism. Now rather than activism, many people see universities as the primary location for both research and courses on the environment, as well as projects that show how a large institution can be environmentally sensitive. But a new report is giving mixed reviews of U.S. college’s environmental efforts. In the first of a two-part series, The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl explores the issues of greening a college campus:

Transcript

College campuses were once thought to be hotbeds for environmental activism. Now rather than activism, many people see Universities as the primary location for both research and courses on the environment, as well as projects to show how a large institution can be environmentally sensitive. But a new report is giving mixed reviews of U-S college’s environmental efforts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.

(Ambient sound – physical plant)


This coal-fired power plant is the primary source of power at Ball State University in Munice, Indiana. Like many college campuses, Ball State relies on this less than clean source of energy to power dozens of buildings for thousands of students and faculty. But unlike many other schools, Ball State has a team of people working on ways to clean up this plant. Team members are also working on other environmental problems the school faces. John Vann is Ball State’s Green Initiatives Coordinator. That’s a new position at the school this year. He says his title has already made things easier for those in the campus community who are looking to improve the environment.


“If I were just another faculty member that said, ya know you should really program your computer to shut down the monitor, it doesn’t carry the same weight if I am dealing with a Dean or with someone else that having this position does. So that really helps to facilitate my implementation of the initiatives.”


Vann’s position is not common among colleges and universities. A new report by the National Wildlife Federation shows that less than ten percent of campuses have a position similar to his. That’s one finding in the wide-ranging survey that looked at about a thousand campuses across the country. The Federation developed a report card to assess how well schools are doing in several areas. The NWF is giving schools a C minus for Transportation issues, largely because schools tend to buy large gas guzzling cars for faculty to use on road trips, and inefficient trucks for campus work fleets. The report card also includes a B minus for landscaping efforts. The report says most campuses are still using massive amount of pesticides and fertilizers to create those flowerbeds of school colors found around campus. Few are using native plants that require less water and fewer chemicals. Kathy Cacciola is the Campus Ecology Coordinator for NWF. She says things are not completely bleak. Schools are receiving A’s in some important areas.


“Energy conservation measures and efficiency upgrades are a key area where there has been improved environmental performance, with 81 percent of colleges and universities instituting lighting efficiency upgrades and 20 percent having plans to do more. That really demonstrates that higher education institutions have taken the lead on really making advances toward a sustainable future.”


But Cacciola points out that cost savings are likely the motivating factor for those areas of improvement. With high-energy prices, a campus wide program to purchase more efficient lighting, for instance, is often more about money than about the environment. She says in other areas where the financial benefit may not be so great, campuses did not do as well.
The National Wildlife Federation hopes the study will encourage colleges to take a closer look at their environmental practices. Tom Lowe agrees. He’s a Dean and assistant Provost at Ball State. He says there is many things colleges should be doing to improve their sustainability. He says one example would be to use more of the multi-million dollar budgets of colleges to buy recycled and environmentally sensitive items.


“And if we could just direct a small portion of those purchases toward sound environmental items, we could stimulate a market in those items, plus we could enable small businesses what are starting up producing those items to make a profit.”


Lowe says colleges have a responsibility to lead the way for other large institutions such as corporations and medical facilities. He says campuses can be showcases for how to be environmentally friendly in an economically practical way. The report from the National Wildlife Federation shows some campuses are already on that track. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Related Links

COLLEGES FAILING GREEN TEST? (Short Version)

A new report is giving mixed reviews to the environmental efforts on college campuses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl has more:

Transcript

A new report is giving mixed reviews to the environmental efforts on college campuses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.

The report card from the National Wildlife Federation gives A’s to schools for their work on energy efficiency and water conservation. But the schools receive B’s and C’s for poor landscaping practices and transportation issues. Tom Lowe is a Dean at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He says campuses must be models for environmental improvements, especially those that can save money in the long run.


“For a corporation, the idea that you could make money by greater environmental stewardship is sort of counter to what they traditionally think. So we have to be the model for that to demonstrate that it is possible.”


The report also shows schools are doing a good job at recycling, but a poor job in making sure they buy recycled products. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Related Links

GREENING THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM (Part 2)

Recycling, energy conservation programs, and water efficiency projects are all commonplace at many colleges and universities across the country. But a new report by the National Wildlife Federation shows schools may not be making the grade when it comes to teaching students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl has the second report of a two-part series:

Transcript

Recycling, energy conservation programs, and water efficiency projects are all commonplace at many colleges and universities across the country. But a new report by the National Wildlife Federation shows schools may not be making the grade when it comes to teaching students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.

Lisa Carmichael is a sophomore at Albion College in South Central Michigan. Her school recently made a course in the environment a requirement for graduation. Carmichael says she loves the idea, but says many students see it as just another required course. But Carmichael is optimistic about what the new course will do for even skeptical students.


“Even if they go in thinking, ‘Well, I just have to take this’, If you make it how this really effects their life, or make it about where does their wastewater really go or how is recycling is part of their life, then make it a practical project that they can go out and work on and see how they effect other people and how they effect the planet as a whole.”


Albion College is in the minority, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation on the environmental programs on college campuses. The Federation gives mostly A’s and B’s to schools for their on campus environmental efforts such as recycling and Water Conservation. But the schools receive only a C plus for Environmental Efforts in the classroom. The report shows that only eight percent of colleges have a graduation requirement for environmental class work. It also shows less than ten percent of engineering and education majors receive any training in environmental matters. Some teachers and administrators around the country are trying to change that. Debra Rowe teaches business and psychology courses at Oakland Community College in Michigan. She says each one of her courses includes some links to environmental issues. Rowe says every college graduate needs to have some background in the environment, regardless of what field students are planning to go in to.


“Once you understand the need and the opportunity to create a more humane and environmentally sound future, and we get more of our graduates that understand that, that’s going to benefit the business as well as benefit them in their roles as a community member where they can contribute to the overall health of society.”


Rowe works with faculty members at other Universities that want to increase the amount of environmental coursework required by their schools. But it is often a difficult process.
Abigail Jahiel teaches in the political science department at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois. She would like to see environmental coursework as part of the general education requirements for all students. But she fears it would be a tough sell at her school.


“I think the concern would be that students already have a very heavy load of requirements, it would be adding something else, and there’s often competition between various academic interests on campus.”


But some schools are working on ways to improve environmental education without adding to the coursework. Tom Lowe is a Dean and assistant Provost at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He says already existing courses in subjects like science and the humanities could easily add an environmental component. But he says it takes a campus wide commitment to the idea to make it happen in a practical way. Lowe says Ball State has had success with a program to teach professors how to include the environment in a diverse collection of courses.


“So the idea is that the student hears these ideas in many different courses, and in many different settings. Art, music, theatre, dance, now all talk about the environment in addition than just courses that traditionally deal with environmental issues.”


This won’t come easily though. Lowe says it will be a difficult process for many schools to take this approach toward the environment. He says it can be easy to convince a school to take on programs that save money like installing high efficiency lighting or purchasing low emission vehicles. He says it can be much more difficult to get professors to change their ways and add a new element to their courses. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

GREENING THE COLLEGE CURRICULUM (Short Version)

A report from the National Wildlife Federation shows colleges are doing a poor job in educating students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

A report from the National Wildlife Federation shows colleges are doing a poor job in educating students about the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports.

A report card from the National Wildlife Federation gives colleges a C plus on Environmental Lessons in the classroom. The report shows only eight percent of schools require any environmental coursework before graduation. Debra Rowe teaches at Oakland Community College in Michigan, and works with schools to add environmental coursework to the curriculum. She says every graduate needs a basic understanding of the environment.


“Since we all live on the planet and all impact the planet, don’t you think you think its really important that they at least get a core base of information so that they can be an educated citizen?”


The Federation’s report also shows some important majors like engineering and education are also lacking. Only ten percent of those students have any environmental instruction as part of their degrees. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.