Activism is Alive on Boulder's Campus

By: Danielle Kreutter

Back in September, three University of Colorado students created a group that focused on immigration issues with the firm stance that it's "not just a Latino issue, this is a human rights issue."

Brittni Hernandez, Kyle Huelsman, and Hanna Johnson founded Eye Resist with the first item on their agenda being, tuition equity.

Back in 2009 a tuition equity bill was introduced to Colorado. If the bill was passed, it would grant undocumented students in-state tuition to higher education institutions if they graduated high school. The University of Colorado was the only school in Colorado to veto it.

Eye Resist's followers have grown to almost double the original size by the time the second meeting took place. The second meeting was a "teach-in" where two CU professors, Dr. Arturo Aldama and Dr. Barbosa, spoke to the packed classroom about immigration issues and misconceptions.

Aldama felt it was important to participate so students involved in the movement could have basic facts and correct information while speaking about their cause, "You all [students] have a lot more power than you realize and the administration knows that."

The organizations has embraced a grassroots activist structure in gaining support and momentum for their movement and have drafted a 'Declaration of Educational Rights' outlining what they hope to get the Regents at CU to agree upon involving tuition equity.

Coalition and community building is also a big goal for Eye Resist. The organization has already made strong allies with other student groups, even those that aren't mainly focused on immigration issues.

Huelsman explains why a strong community is so vital, "It isn't just about one bill or one state or anything like that. This is about creating a group of people on campus that are political activists in general that have that support network, that have that group of people that they know they can rely on so that we can build a united front around different issues and move forward in different ways and not fall apart once an issue does."

For now, Eye Resist's main goal is to raise awareness about tuition equity and hopefully gain support by the time the bill is reviewed in February 2011.

Buff Energy Award Winners Named

CU Rewards Building Proctors Who Drastically Cut Down Their Energy Usage

By: Danielle Kreutter

The Buff Energy Star Program was put in place as an incentive to get building proctors involved in energy conservation; with another year comes three new winners: John Culshaw of Norlin Library, David Nicoll of Hellems, and Donna Maes from Mathematics.

Each of the nominees had to go through an energy audit with Campus Conservation Officer Moe Tabrizi. After assessing the building and finding out what are the trouble spots and what are easy fixes, the building proctors and facilities management team up to cut down the energy usage.

"It's a team effort thing, I play a pretty small part in it," said Hellems Building Proctor David Nicoll, "I'm just kind of the eyes on the building so if I see something it takes funding from facilities management, and it takes the techs that were down there to follow through on the work orders which they did a great job at."

Since the energy audit, Hellems installed low leak faucets and low flow toilet handles throughout the whole building, revamped the air circulation system, added solar film to windows that face sunlight frequently, and removed many desktop computers from their data labs and replaced them with rentable laptops; among other changes ended up reducing Hellems carbon footprint and their energy usage by at least 5% over the last fiscal year.

The combination of energy saved by all three buildings added up to around 650,000 killo watt hours which reduced over one million pounds of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions. Roughly $65,000 was saved from the campus utility budget that usually spends about $20 million a year on energy.

"The more we conserve the more we can shift that money to academic and research instead of just wasteful spending," said Tabrizi

Since the beginning of the Buff Energy Star Program in 2004, winning building proctors have helped save over $300,000 and a total reduction of CO2 by more than 4.5 million pounds.