As the class of 2014 walked through the Van Wickle Gates, tanned on the Main Green and emerged convocated, the rest of us settled into our dorm rooms and picked out the classes we'll take. But this isn't last semester's Brown — widespread changes are already taking hold.
The new Campus Center in Faunce is exciting, overly modern and ready to provide an alternative to the Ratty lunches I for one missed so much during the summer vacation.
Metcalf Chemistry Laboratory is undergoing a massive change, as construction workers rip it apart so it can emerge later a beautiful, grant-attracting butterfly. Traffic on Thayer Street notwithstanding, this is a long time coming, though I do feel that the repaired steps that were put in last semester seem a superfluous expense, in retrospect.
There was also a more subtle — and more insidious — change to every campus eatery and event from now until politics change again: no more bottled water. That's right. No longer can the elitists buy Fiji; no more can the shallow-pocketed buy Crystal Geyser; the end has come even for the questionably named "Brown water" that made an appearance at many campus events in the past.
The "Beyond the Bottle" campaign has made significant headway against the culture of single-use plastic in our beverage selection, and the administration at Brown agrees — bottled water is bad. The plastic will give you cancer, the water usually just comes from the tap (oh no!) and everyone just throws empty bottles into the trash can rather than recycling them.
Therefore, bottled water will slowly be replaced. This has already begun, as the Gate has eschewed bottled water in favor of a "Water Station" located near where they hide the napkins. To me, "Water Station" is just a fancy name for "water fountain" and is a fairly flimsy attempt to take a technology everyone knows and make it sound cutting-edge and new wave. Might I instead suggest "Hydration Station"? It sounds like something Major Tom would use, while the melodic rhyme satisfies those of us with sensitive ears.
In all seriousness, though, what will this actually change?
Lazy college students will simply buy other items that come in plastic bottles, such as energy drinks, juice or soda, slowly fattening themselves on high sugar content and going into debt to pay dentists to care for rotting teeth. Even the not-so-lazy ones who buy a reusable bottle could be lazy enough not to wash it for a week or two, and could cook up some crazy bacteria like staph or strep that could infect themselves and others.
Proponents claim that "Beyond the Bottle" will help Brown to become truly sustainable. This is particularly important in the case of siege or nuclear fallout, since we'll be entirely cut off from the vestiges of civilization and would have to fend for ourselves — though ironically, in the worst-case scenario, necessitating true sustainability, the water tables would be polluted and all we would be able to drink would be bottled water.
In the long run, reducing our dependency on bottled products is better for the environment. Exhaust from delivery trucks, garbage from thrown-away bottles and the pollution from factories manufacturing them all take a toll on our increasingly fragile environment. I suppose my relationship with bottled water could deal with a drawdown in forces, despite my determination to recycle every bottle I use.
But I don't see how this could improve sustainability overall, as it makes Brown an island of "Hydration Stations" in a sea of bottled water culture. Brown is not a closed system; every day there is some sort of event on campus, and some (including Commencement every May) draw thousands of visitors to College Hill. It would be ludicrous to assume that every one of these visitors is going to have a reusable bottle. So they encounter the "Hydration Station," and what do they do with it? It would be like thousands of Ancyent Marineres wandering around Riming.
That would just be silly, some may say — Brown would supply cups for them to use with the "Hydration Station." But what kind of cups? Paper? Plastic? Gasp — Styrofoam? Of course these visitors wouldn't be expected to carry their cups, on which they've written their names, around for the duration of their stays at Brown — they'd throw them away and get more whenever they were thirsty.
Change is a huge buzzword right now, and everyone is trying to hop on the transformation bandwagon — even if it's just change for change's sake. Brown will be damned if it gets left behind. But it seems to me that we haven't thought this through. Creating a bottled water-free utopia is short-sighted and infeasible, not to mention a dystopia for Brown visitors. While the intentions are admirable, perhaps Brown shouldn't be so hasty to go "Beyond the Bottle."
Mike Johnson '11 gives a shout-out to "Sammy T" Coleridge.
