An Optimistic Look UNE’s New Block Schedule
I would like to begin by saying that I do not agree with UNE’s implementation of the new block schedule and especially how they went about establishing it. However, it is looking more and more like it going to happen, so I wanted to bring forth a positive that may come from it that doesn’t just benefit the University and its stakeholders.
UNE students currently have “free” or mostly free Fridays, with maybe one class at the most for the average student. This allows for students to travel home to see family and friends, work at home, travel for sports, attend internships, and much more. In my opinion, as someone who lives 16 hours away from this school, family time is extremely important for some people. It benefits mental health to see loved ones, especially in stressful times such as college.
Although going home is a luxury that many here at UNE treasure, I believe that we fail to look at the downside of traveling home every weekend. According to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “The average passenger vehicle emits about 404 grams of CO2 per mile.“ Sustainably, driving anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours (what I would consider a reasonable distance to be traveling weekly/bi-weekly) would create a pretty large carbon footprint. In a school year, it would add up to be roughly equivalent to burning 53.6 pounds of coal or charging your phone 5,897 times for just one student.
By switching to the new block schedule, adding more classes to Fridays, the overall student body would lower its carbon footprint by approximately 25% or by 12,120 grams of CO2 per person (assuming that about 1/4 of the student body travels home on weekends).
To be clear, this may not seem like a lot, because, in comparison, it’s only about half of an hour-long plane ride’s worth of CO2 per person. But if you think about it, estimating that about 1/4 of the student body travels home for the weekends (at an average of about 2 hours), roughly 148,409,400 grams of CO2 would be prevented from entering the atmosphere if the block schedule were to be put into place (in a perfect world where no one would leave campus, which is not reasonable).
- – 27 homes’ electricity use for one year
- – 16,700 gallons of gasoline consumed
- – 164,034 pounds of coal burned
- – 2 tanker trucks worth of gasoline
- – 344 barrells of oil consumed
- – 18,052,912 number of smartphones charged
So, is the schedule change worth the positive environmental impact it would have? Leave a comment below stating what you think.
*Calculations and estimations were made by me with the help from online sources, all calculations are open for interpretation*
