Vassar College

College Sustainability Report Card 2007

The College Committee on Sustainability (CCS) is a group of faculty, staff, students, and administration that has worked on several fronts to address campus sustainability issues for six years. It has hired student interns to cover specific topics, such as composting, recycling, and local food purchases. The CCS also prompted Vassar to provide its 500-acre farm as the site for the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, the county's only Community Supported Agriculture program. The project also provides a steady stream of produce to local soup kitchens and food pantries, and conducts and supports educational programs on local food systems.

The College has performed several energy audits to find ways to reduce energy use and is looking into using money saved from energy conservation to fund the purchase of wind energy credits. The College installs Energy Star-rated appliances whenever possible and is considering a proposal to charge students a fee for using non-Energy Star appliances in their rooms. In 2005, upon the research and recommendations of Vassar's Committee on Sustainability, the college set all thermostats back two to three degrees, and experienced no complaints.

The College became a pilot test site for Cornell University's Farm-to-College program in 2002. The associate director of campus dining has committed Vassar to steadily strengthening ties to local farmers and producers to increase the amount of local and organic foods in the dining halls, which includes local produce, hormone-free milk, strictly cage-free eggs, and fair-trade coffee. The possibility of converting fryer oil to biodiesel is being explored, and all food waste from the main dining hall is composted at the Vassar Farm through the College’s program with the local firm Greenway Environmental Services.

The College does not currently have a green building policy nor any LEED-certified or registered projects. However, the buildings and grounds department is finalizing new construction standards guided by energy efficiency and LEED standards. The College's recently-opened Environmental Studies Program office is a showpiece in green design and, among other features, utilizes a daylight harvesting system that makes use of natural light, continuously dimming or brightening based on the amount of available sunlight.

Vassar makes limited information on endowment holdings available to the college community upon specific request.

The University prioritizes investing to maximize profit and has not made any public statements about investigating or investing in renewable energy funds or community development loan funds. However, the school has made public statements in the past about an approximately $4 million investment in the Domini Social Equity Fund. This fund looks at and evaluates the environmental performance of the companies in which it invests.

The Investment Responsibility Committee (IRC) includes two student members and two alumni, along with two faculty and two administrators. The administrative members communicate with the trustees and investment managers on behalf of the committee.