Construction is well underway for a 64 million dollar  Health Sciences building at the University of Cincinnati. Is it supposed to make us better at living in our environment, preventing disease, helping the ecosystems of the planet?  Maybe some of this money would have been better spent on educating our current students (and faculty and department chairs, even in the Department of Environmental Health) that we are NOT alone in this world, and our actions have consequences millenia after we are dust.

Why, right in the middle of the Medical Campus and only one building away from the Department of Environmental Health, would the trash cans be filled with recyclable plastics and metal, and replete with empty cigarette packs and plastic bags?

Is no one at HOME here? Is no one educating the students how to be good stewards of the earth.  I have worked here for 50 years and have watched the decline in the last 20 years (yes — decline) of any semblance of concern over being leaders in saving the environment (NOTICE I AM NOT TALKING GLOBAL WARMING OR PETROLEUM PRODUCTION BUT JUST PERSONAL AWARENESS OF OUR FOOTPRINTS). This is just common sense awareness about which I am complaining — where is it.

Were I to rank this University (which I consider myself to be a pat of) on a scale of  5 stars for earth-awareness my ranking would be less than 1 star. Sorry UC, you get the raspberry buzzer.