Here is the first draft of my senior thsis: Part I.

Sustainable Living
In the Context of the
Student Environmental Center
& Community Action

Introduction

True Sustainability must take place with all peoples, ethnicities, and cultures. It must also consider social, economic, and of course ecological systems. We must all perceive the foundation concepts & ideas involving our entire civilizations, their histories, religions, and academia that has brought us to where we are today and the direction that we could follow through at least seven generations. We must analyze ourselves on a conscious level of all the interactions between civilizations, cultures, corporations, governments, organizations, and of course the individual. Further more, it is integral to acknowledge the other living creatures on this planet as integral & equal partners (animals or plants) in our path to sustain ourselves, as well as the ultimate living creature mother earth, Gaia, herself. Some of the core differences of our conventional systems stem from the foundational focus of sustainable systems, which is based on life and conservation of energy, instead of money and addiction to profit.
The concepts and ideas of Sustainable Living are immense and abstract because of their multi-perspective views that are based on a conscious foundation that dose not exist within western US culture. These ideas & concepts are new to our civilization (relatively speaking) and have begun a new evolution in a conscious way only in the past five years. Because of this, there is very sparse and limited documentation of Sustainable Living in our societies, and an even less wildly understood vocabulary to explain it. Therefore to simplify the immense concept of Sustainable Living and be able to examine concrete steps and actions being taken toward sustainability, we will focus on the growing eruption of locally based environmental groups throughout the world. At the University of California at Santa Cruz, a group was formed summer of 2001, called the Student Environmental Center. This will be the focus of the fist section of this project.

The Student Environmental Center is working on many realistic actions directly related to the elements of Sustainable Living. This includes community organizing, Waste Prevention, Organic Food & Agriculture, Sustainable Policy, integration of a multi level burocracy, Renewable Energy, Summit, building continuity from year to year within the community, global perspectives such as politics and the Kyoto Protocol, and much more including the ability to evolve and change to reflect our community. There are many other similar environmental student groups at other universities across the country each has its particular focus.
Although the Student Environmental Center is quite complicated with many aspects, unfortunately it still doesn’t encapsulate all of the elements of Sustainable Living. There are many other local and regionally based environmental groups, which involve broader issues of Spirituality, like the Circle of Life Foundation started by Julia Butterfly, Earth First! , Which puts safety of the earth’s sustainable ecosystems before human sustainability. These concepts are growing and more people are beginning to recognize the need for spirituality within the environmental movement. There are also other branches like Gaiasong and Solar energy which are starting to take off towards a more marketable environmental movement which organizes conferences, seminars, and encourages sustainable business in local green building design, solar power and all the cutting edge technologies involved.

Yet this still isn’t everything that Sustainable Living covers. However huge and immense what has already been covered in the Student Environmental Center and the entire environmental movement, it still is lacking something which continues to isolate people to this day. What that is, is questionable, but if it is broken down, integration is soon to follow. The perfect example of this division is the plain, yet unfortunate, simple fact that 90% of the environmental movement that surrounds us here in California is made up of middle class white men and women. This is missing a huge part of an unbelievably immense, complex, diverse set of cultural & ethnic communities, which must be taken into account when organizing to create a overall sustainable lifestyle for an entire community. For lack of a better name, and for simplification sake, I have chosen the common form of Community Action. This takes into account the ever growing and changing community, and the action taken in simple everyday activities, and the groups, which organize to create action within social, economic, and ecological movements.

Everything which has been gone over already is included in Community Action, but the environmental movement is only one of many cultural and community movements including civil rights, Animal Rights, social integration and more. Community Action also includes the Arts (music, art, dance, writing, martial…), and recreation (sports, hiking, gardening,), as well as the academic field (philosophy clubs, Physics clubs, PICA,), and more…. So how does Community Action relate to Sustainable Living? Sustainable Living isn’t about each group or topic in and of itself, but only about the interaction of all of them and finding the foundational support that can bring them all together. In Essence Community Action isn’t every Group and how it functions within itself, but instead, overall Networking of the community together to provide the optimum resources for contacts to be made and resources to be pooled to allow the most efficient use of time, energy, and management of that time and energy. The reality of Community Action is that it is a simple database system, which logs down community groups and provides them with advertising and documentation not for any one group, but for the community on a whole. The fact is that this is extremely boring and a slow process, but because of its importance in the need for sustainability, it must continue to be a top priority as it has been for the past 5 years. Luckily Community Action does contain much more than just networking. After you network you get to celebrate, and that comes in the ongoing form of the Interactive Community Art Festival where the community comes together with art to show its glory. There are also building blocks to sustainable governments and representation systems and organizational structures…(I almost forgot THE REPORT), which will all, come in dew time. For now what needs to be said is that even with the endless global sprawl that Community Action encompasses, it is still missing some key foundational concepts which truly can never be brought out in any particular group or community setting. We will call these the Elements of Sustainable Living.

The last section of this Project (which will actually be the beginning of the book) will be the Elements of Sustainable Living. This will include everything, which cannot find a home in any of the previous sections of this project. Or it could be something that comes up over and over again and pertains to all of it. One of the key elements, which must be addressed, is the need for Personal Sustainability within the Individual. Unless we can all gain personal sustainament, it is not possible to teach what we do not know ourselves to others. This will include Health, Spirituality… of the individual. Other Key parts of this section will include the concept of Spectrums (organization of ideas away from linearization), Ecological Mapping (how we see the physical world), Education (personal and the balance of teaching and learning), Optimal Health, Music (the universal language), Plant Human Interaction (Plant Rights) (Animal Rights {human rights}), Redwoods, and Sustainable development? Waste Prevention (cyclical motion of energy), Land Use Management….

Part I
Sustainable Living
In the Context of
The Student Environmental Center
A starting push for Local Campus Sustainability
Sustainable Living can be applied to any situation. In this case study, we are looking at how a new student organization, the Student Environmental Center (SEC), which focuses on local environmental issues, gives context and examples of Sustainable Living in everyday life. To truly see how a community organization relates to Sustainable Living we must start from the very beginning and study how a community organization is formed. The first section will start from the problem that is solved, to the leadership that takes form from the created vision. Next we will look into how to run a productive and efficient community organization. This brings us to key methods of sustaining a community organization and brining continuity from one year to the next. After looking at the details of a community organization and what the Student Environmental Center is, we will dive into how the SEC is contributing to campus sustainability, and what still needs to be done. Lastly we will brainstorm the steps of converting a conventional community to a sustainable one.
The layout of this section will be as follows. Each main topic outlined above will be called a chapter and has its own introduction. There will be an introduction for any section within a chapter as well. There will be one or more sub-topics within each section or chapter. Each sub-topic will then have three distinct sections. The first is a definition and description of the sub-topic as it is related to Sustainable Living itself. Next is an example of the sub-topic and how it pertains to the SEC. Lastly, the application and theory behind Sustainable Living is applied to give suggestions for future growth of the SEC.

Chapter I
Starting a Community Organization explained through the beginnings of the Student Environmental Center

The starting of a community organization is a delicate process. Any organization has a founder or group which started it out, but it does not happen without endless hours of devoted time spent on it. The first section of this chapter is about the creation of a vision and the different steps that are taken to take that vision and turn it into an organization. The second section focuses on the first steps involved in bringing people together and creating the purpose, bi-laws, constitution, and descriptions of the organization. One of the most important parts to remember when beginning this organization process, is that when people are involved, a leader/ facilitator naturally emerges, who is usually the one who originally had the vision to begin with. Balance must be the forefront of the combination of everyone’s ideas and contributions to the starting of the organization. We must use the dream or vision only as a guide, and not allow it to dominate the organization. All organizations are made up with people and the communication of these people is the basis of the organization. The communication framework should be the dominating focus of the organization.
Section 1
From the Vision to the First Steps of Organizing
There are four sub-topics in this section which all have to do with vision. Before a vision is even compiled, there must first be a problem that needs to be fixed. From that need, comes the vision, which shines a light on the future, improving our reality. With the vision in mind we can then begin the process of creating the mission, slogans, and symbols of an organization and make it professional. We also begin to describe the purpose of the organization. Lastly, the first steps are taken towards organizing people together to unite a core group.
Problem
There is a need within our communities, a vast void of connection and cohesion. Our determination to accomplish what we want in a hurry, withholds the time to truly look around us and see the missions and steps that people are taking/ have taken already. Within any community there are problems, and to truly get to any type of solution, we need to discover the cause of the problem, which will typically stem from many related problems. To fix a problem is only a short-term fix and is not sustainable. The Cause of the Problem is where the true focus of Sustainable Living lies. To get to the cause of a problem, one must look beyond the problem, and see what force is preventing the solution. Therefore, this force, which is perpetuating the problem, needs to be balanced by nurturing a solution, which typically has nothing to do with the problem, or the cause of the problem itself. To target the cause of that problem allows the necessary process to look beyond the problem itself. Creating the solution will not involve the problem or possibly even the cause of the problem. The solution will be focused in creation to attempt to balance out the force, which is fueling the problem. The cause of a problem isn’t really a problem of itself, it is just an imbalance, and a solution just brings balance.
Jessian Choy, the founder of the SEC, saw many problems within our community involving the environmental movement. Observing the scene around her, many people were putting in single efforts, trying to make change alone, including herself. The local movement had hit a plateau, which was not creating a unified vision of sustainability for our community. There was no accountability of administration to students who were putting in their time and effort with no rewards. Even when the administration said they would do something, there was no clout to hold the administration to what they said they would do.
As Jessian saw it, there was no safe place to go, where she felt safe to say what she believed.
After Jessian foresaw the original problems and created her vision, the SEC has seldom come back to the problems or the cause of the problems, which is the reason for its foundation in the first place. The SEC must continuously come back to the problem at hand to truly understand its place in the community and the direction it is going. We do not educate and outreach to the public with the reason and problem of why we exist here at UCSC in the first place. It would help to continue to refine what the problem is, and more importantly what the cause of the problem is to better educate people for involvement. When people are better educated on why the SEC is so important, they will be more interested and willing to spend time volunteering. This could be done in a simple page outlining the problems, cause of the problems, and the solutions to them as part of a simple SEC report.
Vision
The concept of a vision is the core of all ideas and projects. First we must have a vision before we are able to do anything. To live sustainability and to create a sustainable community, we must create a new vision within ourselves and within our entire community that everyone can relate to. Our collective visions are what keep our world running. We create them a new everyday, and they evolve and multiply throughout our communities. Our communities already have visions of what we are supposed to be, and we need to educate and create sustainable visions to balance out what we have going already. Every individual has the ability to create their own vision, but some people have original and more elaborate visions. By nurturing them, we can share our visions and let them evolve bigger through cooperation. We can let our visions run sky high and beyond knowing that truly what will happen is far beyond our wildest dreams. Yet we cannot let our dreams and visions reflect our reality. Our visions, and the vision of a community organization is the guide to inspire us to build realistic plans and a stable community. We must use the vision as a tool, not our goals and aspirations themselves.
Jessian Choy brought the vision of the student environmental center to UC Santa Cruz. Learning from her own mistakes in the public transportation administrative advisory committee, she realized the need to be able to speak at “their”(the administration’s) level. There needed to be a place to go where one could find the facts to back up their statements. Somewhere where students could lean the tricks and trades of being courteous and professional. With a little research Jessian found out that CU Boulder had done it already. Her true dream is to see the UCSC SEC become as big and effective as the CU Boulder Student Environmental Center.
The overall abiding vision of the SEC as it stands today is to become as big and effective as the CU Bolder one. The more we learn about what we are, and how our constitution reflects that, the more we learn that the SEC will become its own entity entirely different than any other SEC. Yet we must continually update and recompile the Vision of the SEC as was seen in the past, and truly educate ourselves on what the CU Bolder SEC is. There is little research or presentation to our group of the description and details of what the CU Boulder SEC are, and how that reflects our vision. More importantly is to see where are visions differ, and allow new ideas to come in which will evolve our vision for the better. We must spend more time on looking back, and educating members on the vision of the SEC and where it came from. This is the only way we can truly become what we were set out to do. One addition that could help for next year and the future is to figure out how we can involve more environmental groups from campus with the SEC to combine resources and publicize their efforts collectively. The future of the SEC stands in providing resources to our entire campus community and outreach for all of the environmental groups on campus, not just our own campaigns.
The Mission, Symbols, Slogans, and Description of a Community Organization

The simple word definition of what all of these terms encompass eludes me at this time, but there is a connection to these ideas and they are all important for the same reason. It is a type of focus that organizes words, pictures, and ideas to best explaine and educate the public about the organization in a short amount of time. Buy creating these statements you are able to put on a professional image, which gives backing to the organizations projects. To create a mission and other tools to describe an organization we take our vision and downsize it to tangible grounded ideas, which are communicative throughout the community. We must do research, outreach, and educate ourselves on what has been done, what relates to the project we are working on, and what still needs to be filed. We must educate ourselves to do this, and use the vision only as a tool to drive us in the direction of a realistic mission and description, which is tangibly accomplishable and understood. This is also where you take your vision and turn it into a professional outlook and image, which is marketable and catchy. You want people to like your mission and understand the purpose of the organization quickly and easily. You want the symbol to represent the organization and bring a focus, which people can relate to. A slogan can be used for a specific event or purpose, and as the organization evolves a description will come out which explains in detail what the organization is out to do, and what needs to be done for the organization to prosper.
Jessian did endless hours of research starting in the Spring Quarter of 2001. First she research to see if there was anything like the SEC that already existed, and what did we have which portrayed it. With her Non-Profit Management Class that spring, she developed many ideas that lead to her motivation for the SEC. That summer she traveled to CU Boulder to meet with a friend. While she was there she visited the CU Boulder SEC and met with Will Tour (the founder/director/mayor of boulder). There she saw their office, sat in on meetings and observed the dynamics of the group. This was truly the experienced she needed to understand where her vision would lead her and what she needed to do. After she got back, she committed herself to full time research for the rest of the summer. Much of her time was spent on the web about CU Boulder, Yale and other similar university environmental centers. The Mission of the SEC started to come together (see the appendix on flyers and brochures).
The mission of the SEC was well done to begin with. The slogans, symbols, and descriptions exist sporadically, but the fact that they exist is what is most important. Many organizations skip over part or some of this and loose clout when trying to accomplish their goals. Up to this point the SEC has published many different logos, but has never adopted and formerly voted on a single logo that will be the symbol of the SEC. This is an important step that needs to be done in the near future. Once this happens we will be able to make T-shirts and feel confident with our flyers and brochures. At the moment the SEC has different logos and slogans for Summit & Festival, events of the SEC, but does not have any official ones. By having the entire group agree on a single symbol, slogan, and mission, it strengthens the organization and makes it easier for people to outreach and educate their friends and family’s
Organizing!
The essence of a community is bringing people together to make all of our lives a better experience. Organizing will be talked about in detail in Structure section and show how each section of a community organization assists the others. Yet the first wave of organizing is like non-other, where you are truly pushing out a new idea for the first time. It takes strategic planning to come up with a concrete strategy for how this will come about. This is something that any organization must come back to over and over again, and strategize the next step to be taken on its journey to meet its goals. The first steps, unlike the rest, set the foundation to where the organization will emerge in the future.
Jessian strategized a plan from many ideas of how to start the SEC. She put together a compellation of ideas into an email and sent it out to the entire UCSC Environmental Studies list serve. She got many replies and met for the first time, and even got one from me when I was in Spain. Her next step was to have a strategy session with goals, with a few core members
Jessian always believed that we need many more strategy sessions. We should make it mandatory to have strategy sessions to bring unity, re-define goals, and allow for problems and new ideas to come out. It is crucial to plan these strategy sessions ahead of time, sometimes multi quarters in advance, to ensure that they happen. We should have Surveys & questionnaires to learn from the community and our members. Which brings us to the next section about the facilitation of these ideas and goals.

Section II
Leader/ Facilitation, using the dream only as a guide
After the initial invitation to bring people together and the first steps taken to plan, it all starts over once again. Every detail must be gone over again with the entire group in a process to define purpose. The person with the vision must step up and allow the natural progression of leadership and facilitation to allow involvement of people into the group. Yet this person must keep balance and allow everyone’s ideas to interact equally not having their own vision or anyone else’s determine what will be created. Each member of the group must come to terms with the vision and understanding of the organization. This is crucial in that the people of the organization in turn are what makes the organization itself and everyone must be on the same terms. Through balance, it is possible for everyone to feel that they have contributed and further strengthens the group. From these agreements bi-laws and a constitution start to come into play which are the documentation of how the group has approached the organization and working structure.
Involvement, Beginnings of a Constitution/ Bi-Laws
The involvement and the beginnings of the SEC comes from well thought out facilitation of a group and presenting the vision in a way to allow everyone to get involved and contribute. This brings about the balance of more people allowing their ideas to interact. Fusing these ideas together and allowing the organization to evolve uses the essence of balance. To balance the original vision with the ideas and projects and with the future people who become involved pertain to the essence of sustainability. As opposed to how some may see it, the beginning of the organization and the dynamics that come out right away equate to how the group will begin to operate. This operation, if documented, becomes “Bi-Laws” or a constitution, which begins with the first meeting. The way the facilitator acts, and/or how the topics are decided… are all constitutional. How voting is conducted, and how to vote on voting is a crucial step to understand how the group will operate. Action should be downsized to allow time to document the dynamics of the group itself to allow the Constitution to be focused and clear.
There were 4 main people who got involved at the very beginning of the SEC. Bradley Allen, Jaqui Bishop, and Amy (don’t have her last name) all replied to the email Jessian had sent and showed up when it came time. Jessian was prepared to present her ideas with backing and facts of how and why it needed to be done. Being able to present ideas with back up was important to approaching the administration. This backing builds confidence of the knowledge that can be shared. “I belie in it” was Jessian Choy’s focus through her confidence in approaching the people who she needed to talk to. She had the knowledge of what was going to work and what needs to be done to get this organization started. We must back up everything that was said to show legitimacy and encouraged people to come forward. The organizational structure of the SEC came as a slow progression. Jessian worked too hard sometimes. We must all keep our SANITY and realize exactly how much we can take on when we are organizing. She wishes that in the beginning they had down-sized as much as they could to allow more time to prepare herself and the group of friends she was working with. ”Preparing yourself is preparing the Group.”
The SEC can improve its ability to continue to organize and bring new people into the organization by documenting everything. Everything you do should be documented to as much detail as there is time for. That creates the backing that the organization needs to approach whatever problems may be created. With decision documentation of exactly what needs to be done, should be a joint effort done within the steering committee and each meeting, as apposed to it being decided outside of the meeting. Also each meeting of the SEC could have its own type of voting rules and types of decisions that could be made. Documentation within the Steering committee, and more importantly the Co-Chair meetings is crucial. This will allow knowledge to the group on how the constitution and dynamics could be changed. It is crucial to continually improve the constitution of the SEC and vote on them accordingly. It is not possible to vote on constitutional changes unless each is done as a separate amendment and explained in detail, and is in writing as a specific amendment to the Constitution of the SEC, and can be seen how the constitution is changed word for word. It cannot just be an idea that isn’t incorporated to the Constitution yet. Lastly we need to work passionately to balance goals and vision of the members of the SEC and specifically the Steering Committee. By creating balance to attain a unified voice it will allow the organization to work corporately together far into the future. By mending any issues between the steering committee members now, it will allow for smoother transition into the steering committee of future years. Downsizing and giving time for communication of the people involved will allows time for the relationships to grow. This downsizing and focus on personal interaction and communication needs to start at the beginning of the year and especially important at the end as well to allow time to document and pass on the knowledge of the present Co-Chairs.
Interaction of peoples ideas, molding, fusing all ideas together, Balance!
Balance is one of the main fundamental keys of everything for Sustainable Living. No one persons idea can be overwhelming within a group. No one person can hold all the power. A facilitator’s main role is to empower others in the group. Hearing every bodies ideas and letting your own change and evolve to incorporate them to make something better. It is always better to balance conflict with compromise to allow fluid motion, which can work through all the problems. “Working is always better than not working.” There is no Wrong answer.
In the SEC, the very beginning opened up a dialoged with Jessian, which occurred naturally. Everyone’s opinions were valued equally. Jacqui Bishop was originally involved with the Environmental Affairs Board at UC Santa Barbara and had some other ideas to bring in which were heard. The original SEC group hit it off from the get go, Agreed on most matters, and came to an entire agreement with the overall vision. Balance exists as a need to sell what is best for the organization and not personal benefits or beliefs of any individual of the group. No one really disagreed at anytime during the beginning days, but people’s ideas were changed as they learned and were educated by each other. It was soon to be realized that the direction of the group was going, worked to balance the focus of campus policy versus grass roots organizing. Yet throughout the process, Jessian believed that the continual need to build community and create a sense of team was lacking. They needed more Team-Building & Community Building to literally bring back sanity!!! Unfortunately they were too busy, which was probably a cause of not doing enough Team-Building and strategizing. What is really important is our happiness and the feeling of the organization, not stressing out to get something accomplished.
There are many things the SEC can do to improve communication of ideas, and build a sense of community. First of all, everything must be downsized. It has been said many times before but needs to be acted upon with a sense of strategy and planning. We must take into account many things when trying to fuse everyone’s ideas, and therefore our ability to do anything relies on doing less. To enable Team- Building Sessions more regularly, we must have them planned months in advanced and make sure they happen. We must always check ourselves on the direction that the SEC is taking and remember the need to balance Policy decisions and Grass roots empowerment. Autonomy is crucial to preventing policy and bureaucracy and the members have to feel that they can bring up their ideas no matter what they are. The members of the SEC are a Web of communication, and the SEC itself should strategize and plan to allow its structure of communication to embody that web.

Chapter II
Running a Productive Community Organization Explained Though the SEC
This chapter talks about building a community organization and how to run it. First we focus on the attributes of building a well structured and efficient community organization. Then we will talk about the types of meetings needed and their purposes. Next the focus of the organization is brought out as its main project and/ or event. Lastly the concept of the campaign is discussed as well as branching. These descriptions are examples of how to go about, and look at the type of organization that is growing or being created.
Section I
Building a Well Structured and Efficient Community Organization
This section has to do with all the activities that have to do with communication between members of the organization. That includes lists, documentation, strategy, training, and being prepared for the unknown. There are other aspects to a well-structured and efficient organization but these are some of the fundamentals. One aspect, which will be covered in the next section, will be on the importance of balance between the structure of organization that presently exists compared to a more efficient structure which the group may be working towards. It is crucial to have a realistic goal, which represents the reality of what exists especially if it is a start up organization, which is just beginning and has limited resources. The five aspects, which will be listed below somewhat overlap, but should all be balanced throughout the organization.
Lists
Lists are actually a sub category of documentation but are probably one of the most important parts of an organization. Lists of members are crucial to knowing who is participating, who is doing what, and how to contact them. There is no way for communication between members to be facilitated if the members don’t know how to contact each other. It is important that the lists of members within a organization are not be confidential to only the “leaders” of the group. Everyone should be open with there contact information to enable fluid communication. In many cases it is crucial for certain members within an organization, and more importantly members of the entire community to go public with there contact information to enable fluid communication. We must all Sacrifice for the good of our community. We do live within a public community!!! Lists also represent the structure of an organization and how members are organized within that structure. In some cases it proves useful to make a leadership list which outline who is in which role of leadership.
Last year, with the SEC, lists were few and far between. Members more or less knew how to contact Co-Chairs, but it was difficult to know how to contact other members of the organization. Almost every meeting there was multi ripped out binder paper lists, which were sent around for different committees and such. This proved extremely important, but this year because of the creation of a master SEC list database, it was possible to contact each other without signing a list every week. We didn’t even have to have a sign up sheet every week. One helpful list was the first Leadership Contact list, which helped new members to understand what the structure was and who to contact for different activities. Some lists, which didn’t get done, were lists about what needed to be done. To do lists are helpful to tell everybody what needs to happen. One thing, which was always on that list, is the need for more data entry. It seemed like many names and contact information never even got entered into the computer. Data entry isn’t that inviting, and needed more people to help out with it. Last year, with the creation of the Topica list serve for enviroslug was extremely helpful in keeping members updated on what was going on. At this point the list serve is up to 300 and growing and the SEC has more than 15 list serves for different aspects of the organization.
One of the most important necessities for a sustainable community is having a set plan for how the lists will be updated and maintained as the structure, members, and information continuously changes every week or month. This is a huge task and needs to be shared throughout the entire organization because of how important it is. Some of the next steps that need to be made with the SEC, which Merrill Kruger, one of the current Co-Chairs has worked on, is making the lists as simple as possible. This will ease navigation and of getting the information you want, and also make it simpler to input the information. This activity will also be shared with creating a “how to” for lists, which will allow people to read about the lists and how to use them. Lastly, the endless lists we create don’t help if people aren’t contacting each other. We must create a simple phone tree where people in steering committee have a set of contacts and those contacts have a set of contacts and so on which is distributed to everyone who needs the information. Within a half a day we should be able to contact almost every person in the SEC. It is so important to keep people in touch especially those who have been involved with the SEC in the past and could have crucial advice to give.
DocumentationDocumentation is the key to the future ability of our communities to function. Documentation is the only thing that is left over to future generation and our children, which describe what has happened, what went wrong, and hot to prevent the same mistakes. Every attempt must be made to balance out the need to do action with the need to document what has already happened. Everything possible should be documented like a scientific experiment. Any work done, meeting minutes, newspaper articles, flyers…everything, this documentation paper, and more importantly the compilation of all the documentation together so that it is easy to access the information that is needed. This is where the crucial step of bringing everyone’s ideas together especially when you want to put side by side ideas from the first year of an organization and the tenth or hundredth year. What ever is documented is the only thing that will be left when the present people within an organization leave, and new ones come in. Sustainability is for future generations; therefore this is the only thing we have to pass on, and therefore the most important.
Unfortunately very little documentation was passed over from the first year of the SEC to the second year. Luckily by the end of the fall quarter 2002, a compellation of papers from Jaqui up in San Francisco, and in the beginning of spring quarter 2003, a zip disk of endless files were passed along. This helped out in countless aspects of the organization but could have helped in many more if it would have been passed on at the end of the first year. There is no question that the new cubical space, will help dramatically in leaving documentation for next years, and future years organization. It is crucial that the SEC put a priority on getting cubical space for next year. Now the SEC is working on a new binder system, which will make it much easier to find information that you are looking for. Within these binders there will be work plans, meeting minutes, flyers, guides, information, and other resources. We would like to create a new file system of organization. We are also thinking about how to organize the computer documents. The transition from the first year to the next was very shaky and it is a goal for the second year to leave everything as simple and as clear as possible for the third year of the SEC.
There are three aspects of documentation and compellation that need to be done to organize what we have already. One, and the most important one, is to get all the information from all of the people who have worked on SEC activities this year to email all their computer documents to one computer, or bring in hard copies to the office space. Once we have all of the documents that have been created this year by the many members, it would be possible to put all of that information on one disk, which can be passed on to the next year. This could even include simple emails between members or administration. Secondly we need to organize all the information on the computer to enable easy access to it. And lastly we should decide what is the most important information, which is on the computer and should be printed out and stored in the binders for much easier access. The main way to make documentation become simpler will be the development of a method of allowing everyone to incorporate their ideas by themselves instead of having a middle person (the binder system helps but people need to know how it works). We need to make sure people are well informed and knowledgeable about binders and documentation in SEC and how to document what they are doing through work plans and descriptions. Everyone who leaves the SEC or works with the community should understand the importance of documentation to future generations and sustainability.
Strategy & (Funding)
D& D of Strategy with Funding in mind to SL Sources of funding for community organizations are many, and some of the first steps are allocating funds for the projects at hand. One of the crucial needs of strategizing and the reason why strategy and funding are directly related is because we must coordinate our plan to the budget and vice versa. It is possible to run a community organization, especially a start up or grass roots organization with no funding or budget, which is all done by volunteers, but the strategy must directly reflect that reality. Anything can be done with or without funds but in some instances funding makes everything so much easier and quicker. The essence of a plan and a strategy comes down to what we can accomplish with the tools and resources that are available to the organization. Anything is accomplishable with what we have; we just have to use it properly.
The SEC has had very few public strategy sessions talking about the overall goals and directions to getting there. In the first year I am not sure how many leadership strategy sessions there were but I didn’t participate in any. The second year there was only one that I can remember happening within the general meeting at the end of Fall quarter 2002. Every meeting we strategize about a particular project, which needs to be worked on, but unless we spend time going over overall strategy and goals, it is hard to keep everyone on the same lines. For private strategy and team-building sessions, there have been at least three of them, which usually coincide with a SEC Board of Advisors meeting. Each one has been extremely successful with talented facilitators including Colleen Douglas. The most important activity, which seems to happen during a strategy session, is that each person is able to learn where the others are in the direction the group and organization needs to go. It is also important to remember that we are all here to learn from each other, and that even if we may not agree with what someone else believes, we should be thankful that we have the space to hear what they have to say.
It is important to make sure that the small strategies coincide with the big goals and overall strategy that was agreed on, or needs to be agreed on. Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of agreement within the leadership and organization on the future of the SEC and the long-term steps that need to be taken. This seems to be caused more from lack of time to educate members about the issues, as well as a lack of time spent on overall strategy sessions within steering committee and the general meeting. The important role of strategy sessions must be stressed and made a priority for the end of the second year. We should encourage and actually schedule quarterly strategic planning meetings for the entire group. If the ballot measure doesn’t pass we need to be on top of grants and figure out how to improve peoples wanting to do grant writing by creating possible grant writing incentives.
Training
The ability for members of an organization to help on a given project depends on their knowledge of how to accomplish that task that needs to be done. There is no way for new members to know what needs to be done, so it is essential to have a have a well thought out training program. Each member should not only be trained on the general workings of the organization, but also the specific tasks they need to do. Training sessions should be done aside from general meetings, and be organized from one on one session to group sessions where everyone will hear each other’s tasks. These skills which members will be educated on can be used for jobs and teaching of their own. It is important to train the entire group together, so everyone, including the trainer knows where everyone else is at, to enable the entire group to better work together. It is crucial for everybody to have an idea of what others are working on for better communication and participation. It doesn’t help if everyone knows how to do what they need to do, but not how to work together with what everyone else is doing.
Last year we had one leadership training session at the end of the year which was too short and too late. Last year we also had many break out groups to educate new members on what the SEC is about. That was also done during the second year to many of the new members at their first meeting. Overall this is not enough. We need to have everyone being trained on the same mechanics of how the SEC works and also on other aspects of community organizing. There was one session on grant writing and we may do an other one, but we need to have training sessions more regularly. There are also information sheets, which should be passed out to all new members. These sheets should go over information like what the SEC is, how to outreach about the SEC, to the vision, and steps it takes for getting information on the list serve.
To improve retention of members we should work together to have all the information sheets including the SEC brochure and contact lists at every meeting to enable new members to take home all the information they need to train them selves. In terms of getting training started it is really important to bring up problems to the group and the steering committee that wouldn’t typically be herd to better communicate with everyone on what is going on and start dialog on how to begin training sessions for next year. It is also important to get feed back from the group on what types of training sessions we should focus on. Training sessions should probably be conducted on a weekend were there is plenty of time questions and answers. We should also plan accordingly to have time for a second and even a third training sessions. Some people don’t get it right away.
Being Prepared for the Unexpected Everything Else Paperwork…
Every community organization is different as well as the group of people that make up that organization at any moment in time. With the entire make up of the group and any particular situation or challenge changing over time, there is always something that comes up that we won’t be prepared for. The key is to get ready for any situation and the unknown so it is easier to deal with the problem so that the group doesn’t get overloaded and can continue to operate normally. It is crucial to always leave some time and energy for what we didn't expected to be done. We don’t need to foresee what this will be, but still leave time and energy for dealing with it. As humans on this planet, we shouldn’t strive to understand everything; we should only be prepared to deal with the unknown as it comes. We must understand that as we learn, the extent of the unknown grows as well and never diminishes. We will never understand everything; in fact, if you look at the universe as a whole, what we ‘understand’ is almost nothing. Life wouldn’t be life if we knew everything that was going to happen. You can also look at the unknown as those unintended nuisances of dealing with bureaucracy and paperwork. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, it is always possible that there will be ridiculous amounts of paperwork, so leave time for it so it doesn’t overwhelm you.
We don’t talk much about what we don’t know about in the SEC. We have talked a lot about problems that we didn’t know were going to happen and the mistakes that we made after they occurred. When the first years’ Co-Chairs stepped down, the summer after was unknown as to what was going to happen. Yet even worse the unknown occurred with the problems of starting the group up again the next year after two of the three new Co-Chairs stepped down for personal and work/school related issues. When this happened there was no protocol of what to do. Too much responsibility and power was given to one person, with no protocol on how to “redistribute” it. It took over a quarter to get back on track as the SEC readjusted to the new structure and new members of the second year. There was much talk about how the SEC Board of Advisors could have been involved, or methods to facilitate educate to prospective leadership and Co-Chairs from year to year. Neither of these proposals has been acted on and there is still no protocol in place to deal with emergencies in leadership or actions that can be taken by the Board of Advisors in and of themselves.
There are many questions unto how to be prepared for future of the SEC. The most important step that must be initiated for the future problems and unknown circumstances of the SEC is a buffer zone of time and strategizing for whatever may come up. As the SEC prepares for a third year, our best effort to prepare for the unknown will all take place in a three day retreat (the first SEC retreat ever) where time will be spend on training next years Co-Chairs and brainstorm about the summer and next year. A couple of aspects which would be helpful to make decisions about would be as many specifics about what will take place over the summer and what will be the focus of the SEC for next year. One suggestion could be to vote on a few specifics for the summer and people in charge of them, as well as decide on next year’s campaigns. In the first few weeks of the third year, the new leadership could decide to keep the decisions or have a new campaign. Secondly it is simple and professional to make standardized dates for every Board of Advisor meeting and strategy session for the SEC. The Board of Advisors and the strategy sessions should exist and convene outside of the decision making of student who change over from year to year. One possibility could be to have the Board of Advisor meetings be mandatory for every third week of the quarter. Therefore the Board of Advisors would meet regardless of whether the students organized the meeting in case of loss of leadership. Overall it is good to balance out planning with leaving time for what we aren’t expecting. We should institute back up procedures, and be expecting things to happen that we don’t foresee. There is no question that there will be unavoidable problems in the future, and they will affect the outcome of the SEC. There is also no question that everything can’t be changed back to the way it was before if there are big problems, but we can sure get close to fixing a mistake if we have protocols to deal with it. As a far-fetched example, even if we lost our mission, and undermined the Administration at the school, we could still re-improve our image and re-gain our respect the next year. The most important thing is just keeping people motivated to do our absolute best with the resources we have.Section II
Meetings to Run a Community Organization and the SEC
A group of people must take responsibility for an organization and sacrifice their time to meet regularly at scheduled times to allow the organization to grow and prosper. Many organizations have one type of meeting, yet what is crucial for the establishment of an efficient organization that can take on a lot at one time is the dedication of a multi meeting system where each group works on certain aspects of the organization. The meetings of an organization represent the way in which the structure of the organization takes place. Having a system of a multi-meeting structure allows for micro strategizing and decision making to be done away from the general meetings. This allows for more time to educate the public and the group at the general meetings and not get into disagreements on non-essential details of what to do. It is difficult to agree in large groups on specific details, which is why it is better to have separate meetings for those details. The four meetings, which we will go over in, these sections are: logistical, leadership, general, and committee meetings. There will always be tasks that are done outside of meetings but it is possible to have task orientated meetings as well. The Logistical Meeting
Only a few can deal with the logistics of an organization, but everyone must be responsible for them and the organization and projects as a whole. We must take responsibility for our passions, problems left from others, and our actions to truly be sustainable. Many people believe that we didn’t get ourselves into this monstrous mess; therefore they think they don’t have to work to improve our situation. This is a lie, our ancestors got us here, and no one alive now has any control over that, therefore there is no blame on anyone except for all of us for not changing how we live already. The concept of a logistical group is key because if no one understands all of the different aspects of the groups actions, then no one truly has the push, and need to make sure things are well done and accountable. These people, who take the extra time to see all the general details of the groups workings take on a type of responsibility which is no different than the responsibility that everyone in the group must take as a whole to make sure that the full potential of the organization is accomplished. Even so, there are still some people or groups who believe there should be no established structure. This is ok in some instances but it is important to understand that an established structure does not need to be hierarchical. Groups working on different aspects are interdependent on each other to function properly and each has its own type of decion making. For example, how can we be annoyed or mad at administration or governments for not being accountable if we ourselves are not? There must be some type of accountability within an organization and not having specific people who are accountable to the general workings of the group is also a type of bureaucracy. Within an anarchist group, it can also be hard to get decisions made and get everyone working together. You see both structures are different sides to the same coin, and in the end the worst aspect in consideration of sustainability is inaction itself.
The SEC has a structure with three Co-Chairs who presently exist within a higherarctial framework in which they in turn have a type of “veto” power and are financially responsible for the SEC. At one point during the second year Vice-Co-Chairs were introduced where each Co-Chair would have a “buddy” per say who would help out and be trained on Co-Chair activities especially to learn about becoming a Co-Chair for the next year. This new idea was not fully implemented for lack of interested persons in filling the spaces. Co-Chair meetings typically last between 1-2 hours once a week, and every once in a month or two there will be an extended meeting for quite a few more hours. Co-Chair meetings also can be made as conference calls. Co-Chairs are each responsible for a particular project or aspect of the SEC, and in the second year it was obvious that certain aspects were not or could not be adequately accounted for by just the Co-Chairs which was an other reason for the Vice-Co-Chairs. At Co-Chair meetings, micro strategizing is worked out as well as agendas for the steering committee and general meeting. Many decisions are made about the structure of the SEC, campaigns, financing and timelines. It has been quite difficult to get other people to want to take responsibility and to encourage more of a role in the oversight and responsibility of the SEC.
Overall, the SEC needs to remember its commitment to grass roots organizing, which is the key to educating all the members of the SEC about taking responsibility of the organization itself in the hands of every member. Education of the member’s role to support the Co-Chairs and how they each work in cooperation. The possibility that the issues of the first years conversion to new Co-Chairs could be repeated a second time as the second year runs to an end is deeply worrisome. Training and mentorship on how to be keeping the SEC running will greatly improve with the elections taking place shortly and the first ever-SEC retreat. In truth, next years Co-Chairs should have been in training the entire spring quarter and not just at the retreat and the last week or so. One problem was that the Vice Co-Chair implementation idea was not completed and was flawed from the beginning yet the concept is so important and must be perused. One possible idea to improve the program for next year would be to see the Vice-Co-Chairs (we could change the name we wanted) to be mentored by the Co-Chairs as an educational experience to gain skills, not as a “job” or task that needs to be done. This could be the same way of looking at how people become part of the Steering committee and leadership positions; they would just come as an educational mentorship experience, no work or tasks involved unless they themselves wanted to. Lastly, it could be good to Improve dynamics and communication…
Leadership
The leaders of an organization are the most crucial aspect of the direction and future of an organization. This is the body that actually makes and discusses decisions. This is the main body for communicating between separate junctions or branches of the organization and to hear proposals for events and projects that will effect the organization.
The SEC Steering Committee is where the majority of the decisions are made about the SEC. It is comprised with the heads of the campaigns and the Co-Chairs, as well as the committee heads, which still haven’t really been established yet. The Steering Committee typically lasts an hour and a half and for the first time during the second year it has been moved to be on a separate day than the general meeting, which works really, well. First years steering committee seemed like it consisted of only the Co-Chairs and a few other members and the meetings were very low key and mellow. It seemed very hidden and unknown to the SEC general body. The second year the steering committee was opened up to allow more leaders to emerge and became a stable group of almost ten people. Throughout the year it slowly evolved to become a well-informed dission making body. Major decisions must always be “Okayed” by general meeting. In terms of decision-making, there have been some problems on how that it is conducted within the SEC. There was little to no documentation on decision-making presented or described in the constitution, which outlines the processes of decision making for the SEC. Much work has been put into making new bi-laws and specifics on decision-making but nothing has been officially amended within the constitution of the SEC.
Steering Committee of the SEC should become more and more the focal point of the SEC with major decisions, if not all decisions that directly pertain to the SEC going through it. At this point it seems that many decisions are made by the Co-Chairs and although there is no way to get around that, the Co-Chairs should bring up any decisions they make to the steering committee to be approved of or to get feedback on. This will allow for more distribution of responsibility and cohesion amongst the group. Decion making must be documented to the detail. Every decision which is made should be documented and then compared to what type of decision making bi-laws we are planning on writing up for the constitution. It seems most viable for each body of the SEC to have different types of decisions that they make and could have their own way of making them. Enhance the communication and ideas of problems and solutions between campaigns as well as with the Co-Chairs; specifically the interaction with the Board of Advisors where the entire Steering Committee is invited yet never comes. Lastly the first SEC retreat will be a new experience for the Steering Committee and is crucially important to team building and friendships within the SEC.
General Meeting
General meetings are where decisions are explained to the group and approved or to give feedback on. General meetings are also a place to educate and update other organizations, the public and the campaigns on what is going on within the organization and how to get involved. It is also a place to share ideas, get feed back, and give community announcements of pertinent events coming up. It is a place to hear everyone’s visions and get people on the same lines of what needs to be done, including goal and objective building. It is crucially important to have an open warm feeling at a general meeting to enable everyone to speak their truth and mind on what they feel and make sure that no one is being targeted or told that their idea isn’t as good.
SEC General Meeting 30min. The SEC General Meeting has changed over the course of the first two years. The first year there was a lot, which would go on in the general meeting with break out groups afterwards. The second year the General Meeting seemed to get shorter and was established to be about 30 minutes once a week. This gives time to update everyone on the campaigns, hear decisions that have been made, and discuss events and planning. Many times the General Meeting will run a little over, but the group is quick to break to committees.
Our general meeting has been getting Shorter over time. It might actually be a good idea to give more clout with the campaigns and have the general meeting only meet every other week. Very important to keep track of time within the meeting to allow for everyone to speak equally. It also is important to give other members of the Steering Committee and even the General SEC to facilitate the meeting for experience and not just have it be the Co-Chairs all the time. Only once during the second year was the general meeting used to do goal orientated strategizing.
The most important thing to improve the SEC General Meeting is to make sure the “space” and environment of the meeting is open for everyone to speak openly without believing anyone will judge him or her or put him or her down. This can be best with educatation at the meeting on listening and agreeing to disagree. Also it would be good to have more meetings throughout the year with quick goal orientated agendas where post its are used to get feed back and ideas from the entire group,
Committees
Committees and working groups are a way to consolidate forces to enable more to get done on a specific task or issue. For example if you have one education and outreach committee for three or four campaigns of an organization, then they can all work together for the better efficiency of outreach. Committee meetings should be used as task orientated meetings to get started and even finish tasks. Committees should be maliable and ever changing and be prepared to become stable or permanent, and at the same time be ready to completely dismantle and put the energy elseware.
The SEC has broken out into committee groups for quite some time including during the first year, but only during the second year did it become officially named as committees. There is Education & Outreach, General Operations, Budget & Finance, Orientation, as well as a Campus Earth Festival and Summit planning committee. Committee meetings have typically been about 20 minutes, but even more typically they are skipped or not done. Rarely are there enough people to split up into all five committees. There also hasn’t been a fulfillment of leaders to fill the head roles in any of the committees.
Improvements on Committee idea. Some how make the committees be more flexible to what committee meets each week and over time. There are many more committees than just the five, which are officially called committees. Maybe they should be called “Ad” hoc committees if they are only going to meet for a specific one-time purpose. We should have the committees be flexible in name and type to incorporate issues, which need to be dealt with on a call basis.
Section III
Main Projects/ Events of a Community OrganizationA main event happens only a couple of times a year, or only once a year. This is important as the output and progress of a community group, but is not a necessity of the group. These events must have separate working times where the details can be hashed out. Events always take more time to put together than the actual event is itself, some times 100x moreProject Representing the Mission of the Organization
Main project definition and its connection to the Mission
SEC’s Campus Earth Summit
How to ingrain it further
Outreaching Event, a Fun Celebration
Main outreaching Event. Fun and celebrate the achievements of the Community. Separate meetings
SEC’s Campus Earth Festival. Last year 500 people.
How to improve. to be very accessible. Organization of event. Make its separate aspect of the SECSection IV
Campaigns
Introduction to the Concept of a Campaign. A campaign is a focus group to get a specific activity accomplished.. In essence creating a Campaign is like making a new group or organization altogether. But based off of same principles and resources. It can be something long term or not. Campaigns can or cannot eventually become groups of their own, and usually will have some working-groups off of them. Head toward its own group we may want to go toward the idea of a Umbrella hub for the Environmental Movement. Therefore bring in representatives from other groups who would be under the umbrella, having more working groups at this part which could work together
Campaigns of the SEC and its relation to Starting a new Group, and what are our campaigns and where are they going? In essence starting a campaign in this regard is indeed creating a new organization, but the difference is that it is based off of an already existing foundation, which makes it a lot easier to focus on the tasks at hand, by using the infrastructure of the SEC, which already exists.



Waste Prevention
Overall Concept of Waste Prevention
SEC’s Waste Prevention Campaign. WP is only a part of Sec and deals with on campus Waste management
How to improve it in the future
Organic Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems
SOS is its own group for on campus and community organics…Green Building Design and Renewable Energy Sustainability Policy
Overall concept of Green Building Design and Renewable Energy. LEED, Green Purchasing, Onsite Solar Production
The SEC California Student Sustainability Coalition, Policy, The Public Input forum. CSSC is a state organization, which is in essence creating a Student Environmental Center Umbrella for entire UC and State College System.
How to improve it for the future. Making the CSC. Implementation of the Policy

Chapter III
Sustaining a Community Group and Building Continuity
Many community Organizations get started, but how many pass the test of time and sustain themselves into the future to become an established part of our community? Not enough! That is why with Sustainable Living one of the main focuses must be on sustaining our community organizations, our entire communities, and most importantly ourselves. To do this we must put continuity above all other requirements and make sure our community networks are continuous through the years. This requires the stability and assurance yet at the same time we must be flexible to change for every situation as the unknown future approaches. To do this we must not focus on our actions as we usually do, instead we must balance our actions by looking into the future at where not only we will be, but our children and our children’s children. To elapse the time between which, especially for students, there is no one around, it is imperative to establish some type of advisory council, which stays in the area longer or has more expertise in the issues involved. Lastly the need for security of resources is crucially important to enable the necessities of looking forward for the future. We must secure resources and/ or funding by having a continuous channel or a reliant source, which you know, is not going to go away.
Overall Sustainment of a Community Organization
There is a need to slow down and focus our energy inward to balance all the attributes of community organizing to enable sustainability of our communities. We cannot have to focus of our community continually on action. There must be balance between all of the attributes within the dynamics of a community organization. There are five, and they are not all equal, but if you make them all equal you still don’t give each twenty percent of your time and energy, because there is always more that needs to be done than meets the eye. In fact each of the five halve the rest exponentially and the number resulted is more like one thirty second. Therefore the time and energy spend on just action should be one thirty second what you would truly like to do to make it sustainable. The first of the five necessities is strategy, & planning to know what your are doing is going to make the most impact and to understand the baby steps that need to be done first to get there. Next is documentation, which should include planning, and every aspect of everything the group does from personal ideas to action. One of the biggest hurdles that there never is enough time for is those annoying hindrances that we usually call burocracy in the community world. Of course there is action, which is actually getting what you set out to do done. Last but not least, the one which community organizations forget the most is personal sustainament. We as a community together, and every organization must have clear boundaries and programs to sustain their own members and volunteers. We cannot push everyone to the limit until they fall dead tired, but nurture our friends to become more at peace with themselves, and better members of the community.
The Student Environmental Center has taken steady steps at giving ore time to the necessities of sustaining the group. Unfortunately the exchange of co-chairs from one year to the next and through the summer was rough at best. Meeting pretty much dropped off, and there were only three meetings the entire summer, which put a huge gap between years. Also the very little information was passed on from the old co-chairs to the new ones and little was know to what a co-chair truly needed to do and two of the three stepped down quite rapidly right before the end of the summer. There were still documents coming in this Winter Quarter 2003 from last year. The beginning of Fall Quarter 2002 was very shaky and needed much more leadership support. The SEC has still been struggling with coordinating established leadership but with a dedicated steering committee the group has done well. This year there has been two strategies and planning sessions and much attention was giving to correcting the problem of passing on the torch for next year’s co-chairs. Not much has been acted upon though. The creation of Vice-Co-Chair positions helped but was not followed through with. As for documenting, a sophisticated binder system has been laid out and SOS has done the best job. There is much action being done with the SEC giving huge name recognition to the group, which will increase its ability to exist in the future. We also seem to be leaving sufficient time for burocracy although more could be helpful. At many meetings this year, there has been talk about the need to not push people until they are out of breath, but to ease people in. Unfortunately this has not worked so well for the Co-Chairs, which have been extremely overworked.
Overall more focus was given to the personal sustainament of the individual SEC members as time has continued but it is just a start. We need support networks for our interns and peoples school work. The buddy system that was talked about this year was never truly implemented and could do wonders for new coming and busy SEC members. Jessian herself said that strategy sessions and team building are the things that were lacking most last year, and we still need them more than ever. It is impossible to have enough strategy and planning sessions for the group, and although there have been some teambuilding sessions; it is imperative to have retreats and outdoor activities to keep the momentum high. The new positions of Vice-Co-Chair have been all but completely dropped. There is very little support from the present Co-Chairs, and little ability for anyone else to do it for them with there approval. The primary goal it seemed was to have Vice-Co-Chairs exist as a conduit to pass knowledge on to the Co-Chairs of next year. At the least it is crucial that the necessary information be compiled into the binder system for the Co-Chairs of next year to enable a simpler transition. This will be much easier with the existence of a centralized Cubical of the SEC.
Advisory Council
An advisory council comes from the need to build continuity for a community organization. Having this continuity is crucial for groups involving students where there is a high turn over rate between years. In some instances the council is used to get advice from constituents who are older, wiser or are just more permanent. Members can be seniors, experts, professors, and observers. Other times this type of council will be more a board, which has final decion making authority. The biggest necessity of an advisory council is to get advice and have a place to go when there are problems within the organization. This also provides stability to the organization and clout to the professional world.
The role of the Board of Advisors (BOA) of the SEC is to bring continuity to the student-based group and provide legitimacy for professionalism and grant writing. The advice received by the BOA has been substantial and amazingly supportive. Although the BOA doesn’t hold the role of voting, they still influence the student’s choices and in the long run will play a huge role in what the SEC evolves into. Overall, student and professor schedules are hard to coordinate. A couple of BOA meetings were planned only a couple of weeks in advance which was fine for students but not for professors. In general of the six BOA meetings there have been, about 4-5 out of 15 advisors show up. Some of the topics have been leadership, the SEC constitution, ballot measure, structure, and of course the Campus Earth Summit, Festival, and campaigns.
It is difficult for students to schedule meetings for professors. It would seem most advisable if the BOA was independent enough to schedule its own meetings. This would be most important in the case of limited involvement with students where the BOA might be the only ones who know what needs to be done. The BOA should not have to rely on the students to make a decision about when the next meeting should be and what needs to be passed on to the next set of students. The current SEC members should make a valiant effort to educate the members of the BOA on the workings of the SEC to enable them to share that information with future SEC leaders. One way of doing this, which has been talked about but not acted on, is requiring leaders in the SEC to have board buddies, which they would visit and educate them on what’s going on in the SEC to keep them more engaged. The more contact the BOA has with SEC members the easier it will be to educate future students. The last thing that needs to be followed through for now is documenting the resources of each board member for the SEC so that future leadership knows exactly what each member can help with.
Secure funding / Resources
Securing resources for an organization gives more than just continuity. It allows the organization to function and plan ahead knowing exactly what resources it has and can plan accordingly. If every year, or even every month you are uncertain of your resources it is extremely difficult to plan ahead and can cause many problems. Securing resources doesn’t just mean continuous funding; in a sustainable community there is the possibility to do everything without money. For example volunteers are a great asset and must be worked with and secured into a volunteer core to be able to participate in the group. Some community organizations ask for continued donations from credit cards so they know exactly the amount that they have to work with. There is no need to have money if you can get donations of food, paper, and any other items for the organization.
The SEC was started by a grant written by Jessian in the summer of 2001. One thousand dollars can go a long way. Some additional grants were attained as well, but over the summer money disappeared and there were problems with the SOAR account. This entire year there has been a limit of funding. The SEC ballot measure is one of the foci of the SEC. The ballot fee will provide the SEC with $84,000 in funding, which will give staff, stipends, office supplies, campaign fiancés, and secure the festival and summit. The ballot fee has been a roller coaster of burocracy. Last year the UC Regents lawyers rejected the SEC ballot fee for complicated reasons that ended with needing a sponsor. This year we stared early at finding a sponsor. The options were the Environmental Studies Department, the GLBT Center, or the Student Union Assembly (SUA). The GLBT Center became the best possibility because the director, Deb Abbot, is an expert at helping organizations start up, and we would like to become our own antonymous center on campus as well. We still have a lot to do to get through the ballot measure burocracy including officially getting it on the ballot this year, advertising, and having the students pass it.
The ballot fee for the SEC will change how the SEC is run. First of all it will provide staff, which will change the purposes of the Co-Chairs, but it will also change the nature of the SEC. The natural progression of the SEC into administration is making it more and more burocratic. With a fee of that much money from students, there will be a lager responsibility for the SEC and with that comes more burocracy. With the growth of the SEC from secured funding, it will grow to fill new and larger niches within our campus community. This will carve the future of the SEC out in stone to be come a permanent part of campus. Yet with this responsibility, we must realize that how it is carved is of extreme importance to start it right. The biggest problem to the SEC will be keeping the mood, and the money within the budget from getting to peoples heads. There is still uncertainty on what will be occurring next year and it doesn’t seem to be even on the agenda.

Chapter IV
Sustainability of our Campus Community (concerns, and evolution)
The work at hand is to build a sustainable community. The SEC is helping out this goal, but what is it that we are working towards. What is the overall vision of a sustainable community? Is the SEC looking at the overall vision? What is the SEC doing for overall sustainability? What needs to be done to enhance the SEC’s contribution? These questions are hard, and because of the use of sustainability they are ever changing. At this point we can answer them in terms of whether or not enough is being done, and where more could occur.
Some ways to describe a sustainable community is one where the focus is the community today and twenty years from now looked at with an overall holistic approach. It is crucial to have our processes and simple, clear, and strategize so well that our community is continuous throughout the year and between countless years to come. We are only able to truly look into the future at the lives of our children when we ourselves have stabilized our own existence. The web of the community must be so structured that problems cannot get through and are dealt with before they get out of hand. The public must be engaged and exist as the foundation of the community which is built up on top, as opposed to looking down on them as lowest level. There must be constant strategy going on endlessly reassessing the situation and changing accordingly.
The SEC provides much needed commitment to sustainability for our community. The focuses it takes are on policy, which uses the mission as a guide to work with administration. The conduit created is substantial and allows students a dialogue to the administration through the Campus Earth Summit. There has also been a direct connection to the Office of the President in Oakland on issues regarding Green Building Design and renewable Energy. Over all the issues being discussed are transportation, integrated pest management, sustainable food systems, organic foods, waste prevention, recycling, green purchasing and much more. All of these issues are crucial to the sustainability of our campus. The SEC also provides a mode of educating the public about such issues at the Campus Earth Summit. And of course the SEC will be providing more services in the future especially if the ballot measure gets passed.
Yet the overall holistic approach of looking at the entire community as a whole is not part of the system of the SEC. By the definition that bound its mission statement, it is focused on working with the administration on policy matters, which brings about professionalism unheard of within the common community. It is crucial to get work done, but it ostracizes community members who don’t wish to do so. The main question is if the SEC would like to participate on the creation of an overall umbrella environmental organization for UC Santa Cruz. This type of organization would provide the networking and dialogue needed to focus the entire movement inward and consolidate everyone’s energies. Yet as the Sec progresses it inches into the depths of a more burocratic institution that listens less and less to important ideas from the public and even its members. The remedy is to not let either sideslip away and to create a network that stream lines the community from the top administrators to the base line public. The SEC should use some of its money to the creation of an overall environmental movement umbrella organization which would exist above them, and branch out into many grass roots organizations that are separate in and of themselves and do not exist on the administrative or burocratic level. This can be done in many ways and is crucial to engaging the public in the type of organization that they would feel comfortable being a part of.
In conclusion the SEC is doing its part for campus sustainability, but it is only a part of it and unless the organization agonizes its part within a larger goal instead of seeing itself as the all in one answer for campus, it will not be helping our community grow and become sustainable. The main idea is that we should not only be advertising and encouraging the community to work with us, but to make sure the entire community is accounted for and lead people who may not exist comfortably within the SEC to a organization that is more at there level or enjoyment. By having the SEC not take a central role in the environmental movement it does put less pressure on the organization, but to take responsibility of funds from all of the students, the organization should take responsibility for the entire community and grow outward to incorporate all aspects. It is not easy, but it would be the best possible advantage. Either way an environmental movement umbrella organization will be created and the SEC will either be a part of it, or be the name of it, and as it seems right now the first seems to be immanent.

Chapter V
Steps to Convert Conventional Communities to Sustainable Communities
Sustainability is extremely important for our earth and our civilization in terms of ecological, economic, social, community and cultural stability. Over 20% of our land is paved ~75% of our land is affected by human use (spectrum) ~5% of our land is untouched and true natural ecosystem. We need clear pathways that can be followed to create sustainable systems in the most simple and beneficial way possible. These clear simple strategies that can be applied to community systems can cross boundaries and be applied to socio, economic, and ecological sustainability of communities in general.
Overall Goal of Sustainability within a community setting will resemble Natural Ecosystems in every regard. Streams will be protected and cherished, plants will be maintained and respected, animals will be treated as equals, and humans will take responsibility for themselves, the earth, and the beings that inhabit this earth hundreds if not thousands of years from now.
Objectives for a Sustainable Conversion & the factors that encourage Transition Processes are as follows: Efficient Energy use in wake of rising energy costs, Redefining goals and needs and foundations to reflect low profit margins on conventional methods, Use and continued development of viable new practices, Continued increase of environmental awareness among consumers, producers, and regulators, Continued growth and strength in the network of Eco Markets for alternative products.
Description of Levels of sustainability is crucial to understanding the steps that need to be taken. Level 1: Increased input use efficiency, reducing use of costly, scarce or environmentally damaging goods. Level 2: Substitute conventional inputs and practices with “alternate” practices. Level 3: Redesign community systems to function on the basis of a new set of ecological processes
How long will it take to create sustainable communities? It depends but there are key steps that need to happen and they all overlap at the same time. Sample everything you can (changes in ecological processes over time). Observe community changes with changes in practices: inputs, designs, and management… Understand changes in energy use, labor & profitability that accompany the changes. Identify key indicators of sustainability and continue to monitor them well into the future. Identify indicators of sustainability adapted to student/people-based monitor systems
The path to a sustainable future is a hard one, but with clear objectives, levels and steps, it is possible to make it happen. It is going to be difficult, but in the end it helps everybody and will play out favorably to the entire community of the world. It can happen as people keep their hopes and dreams high, yet focus inward and keep simple tangible steps, which are strategically taken.

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