Sara Moore
Science Editor
In the Feb. 5 emergency staff meeting, President Anne McCall made multiple references to the future of sustainability on campus. Near the end of the meeting, TyLynn Gault ’27, chief of staff for Scot Council, raised questions surrounding the campus’ lack of commitment to carbon neutrality. “[The students] have been asking for a public stance on carbon neutrality … but you’ve been telling students we can’t take a stance on it. So, is that you now publicly doing that?” Gault shared. In her response, McCall stated “if I could say, ‘I commit to our college being carbon-neutral by 2050,’ I would feel deeply dishonest. I don’t plan to be employed by 2050, and I don’t know that we can deliver that.”
Following these statements, the Voice sat down with Basil Keck ’28, Kameron Rufener ’28, Braden Shildmyer ’28 and Bat-Enerelt Ulambayer ’26, who are members of Carbon Zero Woo (C0W), on Feb. 6 to get their perspectives on McCall’s claims. C0W is a student coalition that works with on-campus organizations and community members to promote dialogue surrounding carbon neutrality. “It’s structured very similar to a political party in the sense that we don’t really aim for it to be a student org or a club. It’s more focused on being an ideology of people who value carbon neutrality at Wooster,” said Shildmyer. In addition to C0W, Shildmyer chairs an ad-hoc climate committee on Scot Council, which hopes to establish a “5-5-5” council for the next year: five students, five faculty and five staff.
Keck and Shildmyer are both Scot Council representatives, and they launched a campaign through the organization last spring focused on carbon neutrality. “When you look at our school compared to other similar sized schools in Ohio, one thing we lack that all of those schools have is a commitment to carbon neutrality,” said Keck. Of the Ohio Five Schools, Wooster is the only one that does not have a carbon neutrality pledge or commitment. Oberlin College signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) in 2006 and achieved carbon neutrality in 2025. Kenyon College has developed a Carbon Neutrality Master Plan with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2040. In 2025, Ohio Wesleyan University announced a partnership with GRP|WEGMAN to utilize solar energy to reduce their carbon emissions by over 80%. Denison University signed the ACUPCC in 2010, committing to carbon neutrality by 2030 and having net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
In her comments, McCall cited budget constraints as the primary reason for Wooster’s lack of commitment to carbon neutrality. “In terms of carbon neutrality, what I have said, is that I can’t commit to a date by which we will be carbon neutral, because I do not see a path right now to the minimum $150 million, perhaps more, that we would need for the most basic element, which is that we have to get off of our steam pipes underneath, and we have to go into geothermal,” McCall explained. When asked about this, Shildmyer said, “I think a lot of our unwillingness comes from the idea that to achieve carbon neutrality, we have to implement geothermal on campus. And I think that comes from a perspective of thinking we are Oberlin, because they did a massive geothermal project and that’s how they achieved carbon neutrality. But thinking within our endowment, which is a third of the size, we need to look at more cost effective options like heat pumps.”
Regarding McCall’s morality concerns, Shildmyer said, “they’ve been discussing carbon neutrality for the past 15 years on the board. 15 years ago, they said they didn’t have the budget to do it. Today they’re saying they don’t have the budget to do it. A lot of similar sized schools 15 years ago also said we’re not in the current financial position to do this. But now, more recently, they’re like ‘this is something we’re going to do anyway.’ We might as well commit to this now so we get the benefits of it.” Keck added, “if Wooster wants to exist for the next 20, 30, 40 years, this is going to [need to] happen at some point. We might as well make a declaration now and figure out how long it’s going to take [and] figure out a date.”
C0W believes that carbon neutrality provides an opportunity to better the College’s finances. Ulambayer said, “if you want to talk about the budget or technicalities, the renewable resources are getting cheaper each day. Like, 10 years ago, we had the setup and the plan for the commitment and it was very expensive … If you do implement the carbon neutrality commitments and you do … achieve the goal, we would be more cost efficient, we would be more energy efficient.”
Carbon neutrality is a popular topic on campus, with C0W’s three day letter writing campaign last fall resulting in 412 letters addressed to McCall calling for a carbon neutrality pledge. “We know that students are valuing sustainability and dedication to the climate more… in their decisions,” said Keck. Rufener added, “there’s been an increase in environmental studies majors … Why would you want to go to a school that’s not committed to carbon neutrality if you’re literally studying that or … going to school … to work on that issue?” Shildmyer concluded, “Wooster is lacking a lot of direction right now … No one knows where the College will be in 20 years. It’d be nice to give students, faculty and especially alums some kind of hope for things that are happening in the future.”
More information about Carbon Zero Woo can be found on their Instagram @carbon0woo