Georgetown students may have a reputation for obsessing over their GPAs, but the University must take its own grades seriously, too. Georgetown earned a cumulative B- on the Sustainable Endownment Institute’s 2008 College Sustainability Report Card, which grades categories, ranging from investment priorities (A for Georgetown) to endowment transparency (an ugly F). Environmental sustainably refers to the ability to meet current ecological needs without compromising future ones. Georgetown has reason be proud, but for a school marked by overachievers, there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Compared to other District universities, Georgetown did remarkably well; both George Washington University and American University received a D+. The University also markedly improved compared to last year’s C+. And in addition to the A in Investment Priorities, the University also scored Bs in Administration, Food and Recycling, Green Building and Transportation.
“A B- is pretty strong,” Sustainable Endowment Institute Director Marc Orlowski said. “Georgetown is in the top third of schools in terms of sustainability, and it should be proud of its progress.”
Georgetown should be commended for taking steps to improve its sustainability, but one A, four Bs, two Cs and an F are not grades that satisfy Hoyas. When asked about ways in which Georgetown could improve, Orlowski said, “Think Dartmouth.” Dartmouth led the nation as one of six schools to receive an A-.
“Dartmouth and Georgetown are both highly regarded institutions but are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to endowment transparency,” Orlowski said. “The reason transparency is so important is that the basic information [it] provides allows for a more frank and open discussion.”
Unfortunately, transparency problems are nothing new to Georgetown. The University’s decision to keep both its proxy voting record—in which certain trustees vote in place of others to conceal their actual votes—and its list of endowment holdings available only to trustees and senior administrators is what warranted the F, according to the report.
Beyond endowment issues, our C in Climate Change and Energy raises concern about Georgetown’s commitment to the sustainability project. The University has not officially agreed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, despite membership in the Ivy Plus Sustainability Working Group. Georgetown’s other C came in the category of shareholder engagement, which is intimately linked with the larger transparency issue.
So far, the University does not appear to be taking the report’s concerns too seriously.
“Our efforts related to sustainability are coordinated … based upon what is best for our community and not the outcome of one particular report card,” University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille wrote in an e-mail message.
But while Georgetown is certainly on the right track when it comes to environmental sustainability, the University’s chronic transparency troubles—troubling in their own right—and waffling on the emissions issue are undermining progress. The administration should make our endowment information and voting record public and formally commit to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That A rating could be ours.
