Senate Vote On ‘Green’ Fee Postponed

A referendum proposing a student fee increase to fund on-campus sustainability projects was tabled at last night’s ASUC Senate meeting and is expected to be reconsidered next week.

The referendum, which is titled The Green Initiative Fund and would be placed on the spring ballot if approved by the senate, proposes a $5 per semester increase in campus fees that would go to projects addressing “UC Berkeley’s environmental sustainability and the impact on global climate change,” the referendum states.

However, before voting to place the referendum on the ballot, Student Action Senator Jane Park, who is one of the bill’s authors, wanted Attorney General Rosezetta Upshaw present at the meeting to approve the referendum’s language.

Park also amended the bill immediately before tabling it to alter the fee amounts for future years to account for inflation.

The referendum now requests that a $5 fee be applied to all registered UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students starting next fall, with 50 cents added to the fee in its fourth and seventh years. The fee would then terminate in its 10th year.

An earlier draft of the referendum stated that the fees would increase to $5.50 from fall 2010 to spring 2013 and increase again to $6 from fall 2013 to spring 2017.

The Green Initiative Fund was created last year at UC Santa Barbara, where it was passed with 80 percent of the student vote, said Sam Arons, a graduate student in the Energy and Resources Group and one of the bill’s authors, at Monday’s Constitutional and Procedure Review meeting.

The projects supported by the fund could be proposed by students, faculty or staff or a combination of the three. Specific project requirements, including project goals and budgeting, would be determined by the group working on the project, Arons said.

Some said the open-ended requirements would encourage creative approaches to sustainability.

“There are a lot of ways to reduce the impact (on the environment),” said junior Patrick Ford, a conservation and resources studies major and one of the bill’s authors. “We didn’t want to limit student ideas.”

If the senate approves the referendum and it passes this spring, project proposals would be considered by the fund’s grant-making committee, which would have four students and three non-students, said John Stanley, a graduate student in the Energy and Resources Group, at Monday’s meeting.

A grant coordinator would also be hired to maintain archives of the fund, including minutes from committee meetings, records of the projects and their funding, and annual reports from the grant recipients, all of which would be made available to students, Arons said.

“Transparency is the most important thing to (the fund),” Arons said. “Students need to know where their $5 go.”

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