[arkady_renko]

"It's pretty awful. Everyone's really shocked right now," said Amanda Schield, president of Students for Environmental Concerns, the student group that in 2003 rallied support for a $2 per-semester fee that would pay for clean energy projects, like the turbines, on campus. About $300,000 raised from the fees was allocated for the wind energy project. The university would have received a $2 million grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation to help pay for the turbines.

Schield and other environmental leaders on campus have asked students to call or e-mail university administrators with their concerns, "but it's hard. It's finals week. Everyone is busy and stressed," she said.

"Many people fought for this for years," said Suhail Barot, UI graduate student and chair of the student sustainability committee. "If we had known about the funding shortfall ... we could have gone and looked for grants or donations, but they never gave us a chance," he said.

The university's move to pull the plug on the project shows the university is not committed to sustainability, he said.

The decision to cancel the wind energy project comes less than a year after the university signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a statement that called for, among other things, reducing greenhouse gases and using or buying more renewable energy.

[AmericanVictory]

We bet that she thinks oil is bad and icky.

[Oldpuppymax]

A 2 dollar per semester fee. That sounds exactly like a brain-challenged, reality challenged, lib solution to an actual situation. But then, for 2 bucks they could paint a happy face on the propeller blades!