Braden Smith – Arts/ops/ent editor. Some students may remember voting for the Renewable Energy and Sustainability Fund last May. School ended shortly after the vote, and meanwhile, the skeleton of the sustainability fund has been waiting the duration of the summer for the Advisory Committee for Environment Sustainability to give it muscle and skin.
While $15,000 of the approximately $34,000 fund is being spent on¬¬ energy credits from McMinnville Water & Light, $19,000 is available to anyone on campus who wants to start a sustainability project.
So, how can you get your hands on money and beginputting it to work?
“The grants process is just now being whipped into final shape,” Fred Ross, senior adviser and assistant to the president and member of the ACES committee, said.
The details are not final yet, but ACES is working on a simple online application for grant money that anyone on campus can fill out.
The ACES committee plans to announce precisely how to apply during the third week of October.
“We’re planning a big rollout of the grant process during the week of Oct. 19, when a couple of speakers will be on campus highlighting the environment and sustainability,” Ross said.
ACES, along with Greenfield, will then announce exactly how to apply.
Although the fund is supplied by student body fees, senior Chris McIsaac, ASLC vice president of business and finance, said ASLC will have nothing to do with its management, aside from recording how it is being spent. The money will filter through the Accounting Office, which will leave the management of the fund at the end of the year mainly to ACES.
At that time, Ross said leftover money in the fund will rollover.
“Any money not spent stays in the account and can be used the following year,” he said.
So, if students do not use all of the money allocated to the fund this year, they will have that much more sustainability money to spend next year.
With all this money allocated for environmental pursuits, it looks as though Linfield has quite the sustainable future.