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Let's be friendsGo Green Universities Action Guide
- Step 1 - Meet, discuss and plan
- Step 2 - How green is your uni?
- Step 3 - Launching the campaign
- Step 4 - Keeping the pressure on
- Step 5 - Holding a Green League Award Ceremony
- How your University might respond
- Case study - Nottingham's Campaign
- Sample Campaign Timeline
- How to get your campaign noticed
- Ask Richard: Go Green advice page
- Resources for Go Green Universities
Elle Gray, former student P&P campaigner, now Student Union President at Portsmouth, presents VC John Craven with Portsmouth’s Green League Certificate.
The Green League has shaken up the higher education sector and now universities are more concerned than ever about looking green. Your campaign can utilise the impact of the Green League by holding a ‘Green League Degree Ceremony’ where you present the head of your University (or someone else) with a Green League certificate representing their degree class and rank.
Action Step 1: Invite your VC/Director/Principal
Write to your VC/Director/Principal to invite them to the ceremony. Let him/her know what students think about the university’s performance and why he/she should come. You don’t need to mention that he/she might be browbeaten about the University’s ranking.
Action Step 2: Invite the press
A ceremony is a great way to score some media coverage for your campaign so get your student paper on the case. You can save time by adapting then sending one of these template press releases:
- Top-scoring University Press Release Microsoft Word format or OASIS Open Document Format
- Middling-scoring University Press Release Microsoft Word format or OASIS Open Document Format
- Poor-scoring University Press Release Microsoft Word format or OASIS Open Document Format
Action Step 3: Print out the certificate
Green League Award Certificate
Microsoft Word format (3.1Mb) or OASIS Open Document Format (1.6Mb)
Edinburgh P&P present their Green League certificate plus five challenges for the university
Action Step 4: During the ceremony
There are lots of different ways the ceremony can take place. It could be done by itself as a simple photo opportunity or could be combined with a discussion, film or almost any other event you can think of.
Make sure you push the Vice Chancellor to tell you exactly what plans he/she has to improve the uni for next year. It’s much harder to go back on a public commitment.
To make sure the story goes with a bang you could also
- Ensure good photos by choosing a photogenic/iconic location.
- Spell out your degree class or ranking using people.
- The person awarding the certificate could be dressed as the planet, or captain planet, or a Texan oil baron congratulating the Vice Chancellor for using tonnes of the black stuff.
- If all else fails then paint someone green.
What if your VC doesn’t attend?
If the head of your University is unable (or refuses) to attend there are exciting alternatives:
- You could find out where your VC is going to be on a particular day, and very gracefully force the certificate on him (with the media there to capture the spectacle of course). The more public, the more embarrassing.
- You could also have someone else accepting the certificate on the University’s behalf. The stand in could be in costume. UCL are planning to have Jeremy Bentham (the 18th Century Philosopher and UCL founder) accept the certificate for the University.
- Why not rent some official ceremonial robes?
- If you’ve done badly then give the stand-in a dunce hat.
