NC State wins a lot of sustainability awards. There’s the Princeton Review ranking it as one of the top 50 green universities in the nation, the carbon neutrality commitment that the administration signed in 2010 and even an award for campus tree conservation from the Arbor Day foundation, despite the clear-cutting of many shade trees to make room for another building in the Carmichael complex.

Awards are great. But, if these sustainability laurels are supposed to indicate genuine progress towards a more sustainable campus, they fall gravely short.

It’s true that NC State has been reducing waste and cutting certain greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts certainly deserve recognition; however, we must acknowledge that the obstacles that have so far been solved amount to little more than low-hanging fruit.

For example, the lion’s share of NC State’s greenhouse gas emissions come from energy usage. The best solution to this issue would be to source renewable energy directly from solar panel installations on campus to power our horde of buildings. However, at the moment, nearly all solar installations on campus have been small-scale projects for charging phones and other small electronics, like the solar bus stop on Dan Allen or the massive solar sculpture right outside Hunt library.

Any excess power generated by these chargers cannot contribute to electricity demands from buildings, because they aren’t connected to anything but outlets. (Even if they could contribute to energy needs, their impact would be laughably small).

So, while these initiatives are often touted as evidence of the university’s commitment to sustainability, they amount to little more than a waste of solar panels that could have been used to solve the real problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy. Importantly, these projects have been exclusively student-led; there has been little support of large-scale renewable energy usage from NC State’s leadership.

And of course, a discussion of NC State’s greenwashed commitment to sustainability is incomplete without mentioning the millions of dollars of our endowment that are invested in fossil fuel industries.

Similar to the way that real change in our energy generation portfolio is subverted by directing attention towards small-scale solar projects, top financial administrators on campus attempt to distract from our shockingly unethical endowment by touting a comparatively miniscule fund that is invested “in a socially responsible manner” — a framework, by the way, that is completely up to the interpretation of our ex-Wall Street financial administrators.

For context, of the over $1 billion endowment, only about $50 million is invested with any sort of consideration for environmental welfare — a decision whose consequences prop up the financial power of some of the nation’s filthiest polluters.

NC State’s sustainability shortfalls are not the fault of the hardworking staff in Facilities or the Sustainability office. Rather, the problem stems from high-ranking administrators’ lack of concern for actual progress towards reducing the university’s harm on the environment.

Perhaps certain commonalities among the top administrators’ tax brackets and age ranges distance them from the very real threats that climate change and environmental degradation pose to the young and the poor; or, perhaps they have deluded themselves into believing that the small sustainability improvements across campus represent an appropriate amount of change.

But until top administrators take into account the recommendations of students, faculty and staff who understand the scope of current environmental problems, and until they fully support and extend the ambitions of the carbon neutrality agreement to which they committed in 2010, NC State will only continue to take pitiful baby-steps towards actualizing its misplaced reputation as a green institution.

Meredith Bain is a fourth-year studying mathematics and the chapter chair of the Climate Reality Project at NC State.