Through Murky Waters: SGA gives mandate for clean energy
The greening of JMU, part three
By Alex Sirney , senior writer
Posted on February 1, 2007

The temperature dipped below 20, and the irony wasn’t lost on Ryan Powanda.

“It’s kind of funny to me, to have a Climate Action Week [with the temperature so low],” he said after the SGA meeting Tuesday. The SGA had just passed a bill of opinion committing the student body to seeing JMU go to clean energy and, by extension, work to curtail global warming.

This bill comes as a capstone to the Clean Energy Coalition’s Climate Action Week, which started Monday and of which Powanda is an organizer. The bill, while not proposing any specific policy, sends the message that JMU is concerned about its environmental impact. The SGA aligned itself with this cause, and in so doing, has re-asserted itself on campus.

The bill of opinion shows the SGA committing to an important cause, its rubber-stamp reputation notwithstanding, and to SGA president Brandon Eickel, it represents a “breakaway from the internal” that has seemed to be the group’s focus for the last few months.

This breakaway from the internal is exactly what the SGA has needed, and its continued work with the coalition is exactly what the campus needs. With the SGA’s backing, the message the coalition will take to the administration will be much stronger.

David Allen, a senator who has worked as a liaison between the SGA and the coalition, said that taking the ideas of the group and turning them into action is the next step. This is something he said he and Eickel think the SGA can help with.

“We can get grunt work done with numbers and capable members,” Allen said. Eickel echoed this, saying the SGA can send out its members to provide help as the coalition needs it.

Allen’s work with the group has been much appreciated, and represents the kind of involvement the SGA can have with student groups. Allen has attended many of the events the coalition has put on, and has high hopes for the group.

“We can be a sleepy campus, but once in a while these issues can really stir us,” he said, citing the ECP debate in 2003, which resulted in JMU being recognized by Time magazine as an activist campus, and the Save Our Sports movement last semester. This could “absolutely” be an issue like that, he said, and expressed hopes that the student body will get behind clean energy.

The SGA, as the student body’s representative, has certainly set the proper tone. The bill passed without debate 63-0 after gathering the 2,000 student signatures necessary to be considered. The signatures were gathered in the last two weeks, an impressive feat and one which Allen says usually takes months.

That feat, along with the mandate of the unanimous vote, will give the coalition support and legitimacy when its representatives meet with President Rose on Feb. 8. The coalition hopes to present the case for clean energy at JMU, and this showing of student support should go a long way in proving JMU is a place where clean energy is not only morally necessary but popularly demanded.

“Schools in Virginia have been notorious for not addressing environmental issues,” Powanda said. “JMU has a chance to be at the forefront.”

The university must seize this chance and, backed now by the coalition, the SGA and the student body, it is well-positioned to do just that.

Alex Sirney is a senior anthropology/SMAD major.