While the University received A grades for its administration, student involvement, food and recycling policies, and investment priorities, its overall ranking was tarnished by a D for endowment transparency and a C for shareholder engagement. The University rounded out its marks with B grades for climate change and energy, green building, and transportation policies.
Across the Ivy League, Yale, Harvard, Brown and Penn were each given an A-minus, Dartmouth received a B-plus, and Cornell and Columbia joined Princeton with B’s.
The University received the same overall grade last year, after earning a B-minus in 2007 and 2008.
Mark Orlowski, executive director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, said in an e-mail that the report aims to encourage schools to learn from each other’s experiences and inform high school students during the college selection process.
Sustainability Manager Shana Weber, Director of Dining Services Stu Orefice and Michael Walden, president of the Princeton University Investment Company, submitted information on behalf of the University to the Sustainable Endowments Institute last summer. Carol Dreibelbis ’11, former co-president of Greening Princeton, submitted information about the student body.
The report considers transparency of endowment investment holdings and shareholder proxy records because “access to endowment information is needed within a college community to foster constructive dialogue about opportunities for clean energy investment as well as shareholder voting priorities,” Orlowski explained.
As institutional investors, Orlowski said, universities can improve sustainability efforts by forming shareholder responsibility committees to “include students, faculty and alumni in research and discussion of important corporate policies on sustainability.”
University spokeswoman Emily Aronson said that “it is not at all clear to us why a report card proposing to measure an institution’s commitment to sustainability includes a grade based on ‘endowment transparency’ or on the institution’s policies regarding ‘shareholder engagement,’ ” explaining that “Princeton remains strong in measures of the University’s commitment to sustainability.”
She also said that it is difficult to make meaningful comparisons between different universities, as “institutions that think carefully and critically about [sustainability] issues have unique solutions informed by their location, demographics, regional climate, access to public transportation, access to renewable energy sources, institutional mission, campus culture, public policy and a number of other factors.”
“Princeton is committed to greenhouse gas reduction, resource conservation and sustainability focus in research, education and civic engagement,” Aronson added.
Miyuki Miyagi ’12, co-president of Greening Princeton, said in an e-mail that she felt the report was fair in breaking down the different aspects of campus sustainability but added that “it’s frustrating to me as a student that our grade was brought down by averaging in the [grades] we got for endowment transparency.”
She noted that the University’s investment policies were something that “many interest groups on campus have an issue with, not just the environmental community.”
Miyagi also said that she felt the grading may have been easier in areas in which the University excels. “On the last report card, all of our peer institutions also received A’s even though Princeton is the sustainable dining leader, at least in the Ivy League,” Miyagi explained.
The report surveyed the 300 universities with the highest endowments, as well as 32 other schools who applied to be included.
In the University’s 2009 Report on Sustainability, the University announced plans to invest more than $40 million over the next decade to reduce overall utility usage on campus by at least 25 percent. On food policy, 45 percent of Dining Services products are purchased from within 200 miles of campus, while the University saves 118 tons of wood products and the emission of 79 metric tons of carbon dioxide through its recycled paper policy, the report noted.
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