Earth Day
April 22, 2008

Photos by Yee-Fun Yin

Many things happened this week to celebrate Earth Day. Students organized a dress down day if you wear green, but the big event on Tueaday, for Morning Meeting was a tree planting, accompanied by readings and music by Collegium.

A disease-resistant elm was planted is just to the left of the sidewalk leaving Main Circle headed toward the Annex Parking Lot.

Also in celebration of Earth Week, and more specifically Earth Day on April 22, the school is encouraging each and every individual not to use school printers and copiers.

This idea—the automated shutdown of public computers, encouraging people to learn more about electronic filing—were proposed by the Information Technology Department as part of the larger efforts Taft is making as a community to have a much smaller environmental footprint.

The new remote and automated building control systems now in use by the facilities department, reduction in waste coming out of the dining hall, the increased planting of trees across campus, the increased use of fluorescent bulbs, the installation of new energy efficient windows and other conservation efforts help to reduce costs and allow us to play our part in protecting the planet.

"A number of individuals and department heads throughout the community have come to IT looking for ways to use technology to reduce their dependence on paper," explains IT director Mark Bodnar. "People are finding themselves swimming in paper that they touch once and never touch again. They want a way out."

Many across campus are making huge strides in paper conservation, he adds. Faculty and students are using the network "dropboxes" to exchange submitted and graded papers electronically. Faculty are using the comment and editing features in Word to provide electronic feedback to students. Projection in the classrooms and the ability to post all class materials electronically on the web is serving to reduce our paper usage. Faculty and staff alike are using the duplex and scan to email features of our network copiers to cut paper usage.

"As a community we are making great strides," says Mark. "We can do more. We in IT are trying to use the backdrop of Earth Day and the entire week surrounding this day to continue to raise awareness, generate conversation and educate the broader community on how we might do things differently. We will continue to post ideas (electronically of course) on the tools and tactics that are at hand.

"There are occasions when paper copy is absolutely essential," he says, "but we ask that this coming week and every other week, take pause before you print."