The Think Outside the Bottle (TOTB) campaign sponsored a resolution that passed the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate last night by a vote of 19-3-0.
The resolution aims to put pressure on the administration to lower its spending on bottled water at university-sponsored events and to encourage the use of tap water.
"Our major goal with the resolution is to let the administration know that there is student support for this issue and that we are looking for them to get involved with making a change at Tufts," said junior Elizabeth DeWan, one of the resolution's authors.
In the most recent TCU Senate survey, 66.9 percent of respondents said they consume bottled water at on-campus events and 84.3 percent said they would support efforts to reduce the amount of bottled water in favor of purified tap water.
DeWan feels these results are conclusive.
"It shows that bottled water is just an issue of convenience," she said. "It [doesn't] seem like there's a preference for bottled water given that people would support changing it if they could."
Some senators expressed concerns about large on-campus events like Winter Bash and Fall Ball during the discussion of the resolution, noting that many students come to these events intoxicated and therefore in need of readily accessible hydration.
Senior Kate Daniel, another author of the resolution, said that the TOTB members had already considered this issue.
"What we thought would be a good idea is to have tap water along with bottled water," Daniel said. She noted that having tap water in coolers and using paper cups to distribute it would allow students a more environmentally sound alternative.
The next step for Tufts' TOTB students will be to continue to lobby student groups to sign their pledge, which is part of a larger effort sponsored by Corporate Accountability International (CAI), and to present their views to the administration.
"We would really like to keep building this momentum, so we're going to be working with more student groups who haven't yet signed our pledge to get them on board and to help them commit to not using bottled water at their events," Daniel said.
She anticipates a collaborative effort to affect university policies.
"We'll also be looking to work more closely with the administration and with Dining Services to see what obstacles are in the way of having events free of bottled water and of the university [not purchasing] bottled water," she said.
TCU President Neil DiBiase said he is impressed by the TOTB campaign's efforts.
"I think that they had a convincing argument and they had data from the student body that supported them," he said.
The campaign justifies its stance against the corporate control of water by claiming that bottled water undermines confidence in the cleanliness of tap water systems, privatizes a good that should remain public, and has severe environmental effects.
"Bottled water corporations have sold people a bill of goods positioning bottled water as healthy, when in reality it threatens our health and our ecosystems, costs thousands of times what tap water costs, and undermines local democratic control over a common resource," the CAI Web site says.
Bottling company officials have responded to the campaign by claiming that their water offers consumers benefits that tap water does not.
"It fulfills people's need for a portable, easily accessible, healthful beverage when they're on the go," Jane Lazgin, a spokesperson for Nestle Waters North America, told the Daily earlier this semester.
The Tufts TOTB students have organized a press conference and a tap-water challenge for Wednesday in Sophia Gordon Hall, where they plan to discuss the progress they have made on their campaign.
