I love Brandeis. It provides me with superb education, many opportunities and an endless number of interesting people to meet and connect with. I especially admire this school because of its strong commitment to values such as social justice, equality and adherence to protect the environment and gradually cut consumption.
Nevertheless, at least in terms of environmental protection, Brandeis often does not stand for its own values and keeps over-consuming energy and wasting resources. My three years at Brandeis made me realize we really need to improve the way things work now. Almost every night, when I finish doing homework, I find myself turning off lights and projectors that were left on for hours after the last class ended. As I finally leave campus, I go outside and see countless buildings, including the library, with virtually all lights on, with no real use. Though student groups have attempted to solve this problem, it remains.
Recently I saw that one of the hand dryers at gym was constantly on. As a good citizen and a good Brandeisian, I drew the attention of the gym workers to this issue right away. Three days later, as I am writing this piece, the dryer is still on. Regardless of the exact reason why this problem has yet to be taken care of, I personally see it as one more incident which calls our deep attention and care.
Brandeis is our house. We are the ones who live in it, we are the ones who keep building it. Making many efforts and devoting tremendous financial resources, we, the students, make this university better each and every day. Hence, we should not let a culture of waste to control our home; we should not let neglect and lack of attention become the rule in this campus. Instead, we need to take responsibility and prevent such small and big incidents from happening. All of us shall talk and explain to our great professors, to our beloved staff and to each and every visitor that we do truly believe in our values and when we, for any reason, fail to stand up for them, we take action and change the situation. Brandeis: The time has come to make sure our school does not only preach to protect the environment, but truly does so.
