President Perfumo Will Sign Climate Commitment

PCC President Paulette Perfumo will sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which has become the threshold for over 600 colleges nationwide to take part in a growing movement toward sustainability, on Tuesday at noon at the Galloway Plaza.In what professor Ling O'Connor has called the "conclusion of a year-long dialogue," PCC is nearing its first public display of committing to a greener future.

The decision to sign the commitment came directly after a meeting by the campus' Sustainability Task Force, a shared governance group, where it was voted unanimously to recommend it to Perfumo.

The Task Force had met before to address committing PCC toward a greener future but was met with resistance from within due to the lack of interest from students, faculty and staff, according to O'Connor, chair of the Task Force.

The most recent Sustainability Task Force meeting saw an increase in attendance and was what finally convinced Task Force officials to opt to recommend the Climate Commitment to the president, according to O'Connor.

O'Connor credits the "Leap Frog into a Sustainable Future" Green Summit held in Galloway Plaza on Nov. 2 for the spike in attendance in the meeting. "The majority [of attendants] were students, actually," she said.

Up until the Task Force's recommendation, one year and a day had passed since the campus club Seeds of Change and O'Connor convinced the Board of Trustees to make PCC a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a consortium of schools and businesses looking to become sustainable.

The Presidents Climate Commitment seemed like a natural next step, but the idea sparked dialogue among officials.

"Initially there was a lot of debate about whether or not some of the employees here thought we could make that commitment," Perfumo said at Tuesday's AS-sponsored presidential forum.

Perfumo said she sanctioned the Sustainability Task Force to further the discussion on whether PCC was ready to sign the commitment. "I don't want this to be an empty commitment, I want it to mean something and I want us to be committed to follow through," Perfumo said.

"I feel like it's been vetted in a very open forum and there has been a lot of discussion and a lot of good advice that has been given to me," she said.

A change in leadership and scheduling conflicts are what delayed the Task Force from deeply discussing bringing sustainability to PCC, according to Perfumo.

"The staff and faculty really need to be onboard with this, and they need to understand the seriousness of this problem," said O'Connor. She recently had suggested making sustainability a flex day topic, but was told to await consideration by the Flex Day committee.

O'Connor reached this conclusion after, out of the multitude of staff and faculty members whom were sent an email from the president about a meeting of the newly appointed Green Team, only one showed up. "Everyone else who came were already involved in the event," O'Connor said.

O'Connor hopes the public signing will further increase awareness among students and faculty. "When you have a top down decision it makes a difference, it moves things forward," she said.

Just as they did for the Green Summit, members of Seeds of Change will coordinate the hour-long event.

Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard will be the opening speaker in Tuesday's event followed by PCC officials, ending with Perfumo officially signing the Climate Commitment.