About the Student Environmental Center
WHO ARE WE?
The Student Environmental Center is a student-run, student-led organization that promotes sustainability and environmental education at UCSC. We were created by students, for students, as a safe space for like-minded, passionate individuals to work collectively on important issues related to sustainability and environmental justice. We aim to help students become educated and empowered, guiding them to find and use their voice on this campus.
At the beginning of each quarter, we decide on a main project/topic that we want to focus on. Within our area of focus, SEC creates smaller, short-term, projects and events to help students become informed and involved with pertinent issues. These smaller projects further work to achieve our larger goals in the long run.
OUR HISTORY
IT ALL STARTED IN 2001 WHEN...
Students who recognized the value of the natural environment became tired of attending events, engaging in conversations with university administration, and seeing no action toward favorable environmental policies.
These students, passionate about taking action towards sustainability, researched models of student agency and activist organizations at other universities so that they could institutionalize sustainability on their own campus, UC Santa Cruz. Eventually, basing the Student Environmental Center (SEC) off of the CU Boulder student agency model, the SEC was created with the goal of seeking clear and specific sustainable initiatives through student's voices, education, and empowerment.
To achieve these goals, SEC convened the first Earth Summit in 2002. The event brought students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community members together to discuss the state of sustainability at UC Santa Cruz.
Of many notable accomplishments that first Earth Summit manifested, it first guided Earth Summit participants to form working groups and the Chancellor's Sustainability Action Council (CSAC), a supporting group designed to "help institutionalize and coordinate the ongoing efforts of the working groups." Together, these working groups and CSAC sought to spark important conversations and put projects identified at Earth Summit into action. A second impactful outcome of the first Earth Summit was the creation of the Blueprint for a Sustainable Campus. This document was first created and circulated in 2003 as an "action plan" inspired by and developed through conversations had at the first Earth Summit.
Enviroslug is currently working on the No Time To Waste campaign to hold UCSC accountable for missing the Zero Waste by 2020 goals. In response to human-fueled climate change, we the students, call upon UCSC to take responsibility as an institution of 20,000 people and growing. We urge UCSC to reduce its contribution to the destruction of the natural environment now!
FUNDING
The SEC further worked to pass Ballot Measure 9, the Campus Sustainability Programs Fee in 2003. The passing of Measure 9 established a quarterly $3 student fee, in order to create a source of funding for projects to achieve SEC’s goals.
The Campus Sustainability Council (CSC) was formed to rightfully distribute the funds collected by these student fees to students and student organizations committed in institutionalizing "environmentally sound practices on campus.”
These funds supported and continue to support educating and empowering students on topics related to environmental justice and sustainability, through various programs and events. Ballot Measure 14 raised the fee to $6 in 2005.
(Some of ) Our Spring 2019 team at Spring Retreat held at Wind Tree in the Santa Cruz Mountains (April 6th, 2019)