Open letter to VCU

Our story:

We are Green Action, a student-led environmental advocacy and climate justice organization on campus. We have been pushing for VCU to take definitive action on climate and environmental issues impacting our community, as well as to take accountability for their own environmental impact within the city of Richmond and beyond. Additionally, we are calling for acknowledgement of the extremity of the ecological crisis we are living in, and the vital importance of not only recognizing this, but taking concrete action to address it.   

Over the past two years, we have circulated a petition for VCU to declare a climate emergency and to implement specific demands to make VCU a more sustainable institution (our protest related to this petition was previously covered in the Commonwealth Times and the Richmond Times Dispatch). 

Over the summer, some of our club officers, along with faculty members, gathered to update our petition, and several new pieces of information came to light. We discovered the 2010 Climate Action Plan, which is no longer available online, but one of the faculty members had a copy of it saved from several years ago. As we paged through it, we saw that it was an extremely comprehensive and specific document that VCU could have implemented to decrease emissions. However, no annual reports on the 2010 CAP are available, and the emissions reduction targets of 3,000 to 4,000 metric tons of CO2 per year from 2010 to 2025 will most likely not be met. The failure to implement this comprehensive plan is extremely concerning, so we are requesting that a definite timeline and robust funding be established and allocated for the implementation of the ONE VCU Sustainability Plan, which has a timeline published for its development but not its implementation.

Furthermore, VCU went through an arduous process of selecting and hiring a consulting company to develop the One VCU Sustainability Plan, and committed $500,000 to it (for scale, VCU just wasted 73 million on a tanked building project). There were some concerns about hiring an outside consultant when there were professors who had expertise in house. However, we think that the administration pulled out of the contract not out of a desire to meaningfully involve faculty in the plan, but out of a lack of financial and ideological commitment to real sustainability. Now, the plan is still in early development stages by faculty volunteers on committees, who are not being compensated for their time and might not have the specific expertise or bandwidth needed to design the highly technical elements of the plan. Thus, we want to see VCU make a public commitment to spend at least $500,000 on early implementation of the plan, and possibly hire an ethical consultant back on board.

We sent out a statement detailing our demands to the VCU Administration Thursday, October 12th and received a response the following day. The administration made no commitment to integrating these demands, or acknowledging the action needed to be taken to address the climate crisis. Their response shows not only an unwillingness to acknowledge the climate crisis, but to take the concerns of the student body, faculty, and community seriously. In response to this, we are planning another student demonstration on Friday, November 10th, from 12-1 PM on VCU Monroe Park Campus. 

Letter sent to VCU administration:

Subject line: Green Action Student Demands

To the VCU Administrative Cabinet and the Board of Visitors,

Firstly, we want to thank you for the willingness to meet with Green Action board members, previously and in the future.

Over the summer, several faculty and students met to revise the Climate Emergency Declaration Petition, and we are calling attention to these changes about what the students expect from the One VCU Sustainability Plan. Young people like us will have to bear the brunt of the life-altering impacts of the climate crisis – the wildfires ruining the air we breathe, the ocean acidification killing the ecosystems we rely on, and the extreme weather threatening the crops we eat and our own survival. We must act now to preserve a liveable future for ourselves and our children.

1. We believe that VCU needs to acknowledge that we are facing a climate emergency (point 1 on the Climate Emergency Petition).  The acknowledgement of a climate emergency is an important first step towards necessary change to protect students, staff, and the broader city and community that VCU is a part of from the climate crisis. 
2. We have witnessed movement towards sustainability with the advancement of initiatives such as the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, LEED certified buildings, and the release of VCU’s Greenhouse gas emissions dashboard (points 3 and 4). These are all great measures towards creating a more sustainable future for VCU. However, there have been shortcomings such as the lack of follow through on the 2010 Climate Action Plan, the slow pacing of the ONE VCU Sustainability Plan, and lack of fossil fuel divestment initiatives. Our futures depend on concrete action, not empty promises. Improving on these initiatives by incorporating meaningful student and faculty feedback is essential as VCU moves forward. 
3. At the rate at which VCU is enacting changes, we cannot become carbon neutral by 2050 given the meager 1% decrease in scope 1 (direct sources) and scope 2 (indirect sources) of greenhouse gas emissions from 2008-2021. It is absolutely imperative that we see quick and effective emissions reduction (point 2). 
4. VCU’s current assets totaling $6.985 billion, and VCU’s investments, are controlled by the Board of Visitors. Investments made using student dollars and VCU’s endowment of $2.72 billion dollars should be made public for the student body to easily read and interpret. We should have a choice in how our money is affecting the consumption of fossil fuels, as stated in point 6 of the petition.
5. A Community Advisory Committee, including members from different neighborhood associations, was recently organized to work on the creation of VCU’s Sustainability Plan. However, it is vital that communities who are disproportionately affected by climate change, including residents of Black, lower income, and other minority communities are well-represented in the Committee (point 5). What are the specific community organizations that are involved and their roles in the development of the Sustainability Plan? 
6. In light of the termination of the $500,000 contract with the consulting company originally hired to build the Sustainability Plan, VCU should commit to funding at least $500,000 to the One VCU Sustainability Plan’s development and implementation. Lastly, we emphasize the importance of committing to a timeline of implementation for the One VCU Sustainability Plan to avoid the fate of the 2010 Climate Action Plan. When Green Action members have previously spoken with administration, it was implied that the measures suggested in the plan would be prioritized and then implemented based on the budget available that fiscal year. VCU should instead commit to a timeline of implementation that achieves the 50% reduction by 2030 that the latest IPCC report indicates is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, regardless of effects on profit. 

We thank you for your time, and look forward to your response. 

• VCU Green Action

And all 2,000+ students, as well as faculty, who have signed our petition to date