The hard sell

The hard sell On Campus

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hemical health and safety managers usually have a hard time selling compliance on campus. Often, they administer the environmental management obligations of campus operations with ingenuity. Frequently, they have aptitude in laboratory and chemical safety. Rarely does a campus ®nd itself with academics whose direct interest lies in the ®eld of campus laboratory safety or management of campus environmental impact. Generally, campus constituents think that ``someone'' manages these issues. Compliance is mandatory, so someone must be taking care of it, right? However, since compliance requires a fundamental shift in behavior from all affected, many campus chemical health and safety managers cannot be that ``someone.'' Herzberg calls safety and security a ``hygiene factor'' in personal motivation. If a workplace lacks that factor, people's motivation to achieve wanes. Mazlow recognizes safety and security in his hierarchy of needs. People who do not feel safe and secure cannot belong, af®liate or selfactualize. Stuart recognizes this kind of order in his scale: Safe, Healthy, Comfortable, Productive. People who are not safe and healthy cannot be truly productive.1 These basic climate philosophies drive compliance requirements in chemical health and safety. In this context, compliance programs make sense. But, on campus, compliance lacks allure. Sustainability mavens talk about the symbolicÐmeaningful, but no impact on campus ecological footprintÐand the signi®cantÐ meaningful and a reduction in footprint. Compliance, usually, is neither. Ful®lling a requirement is not a symbolic gesture, and compliance issues rarely reduce the campus ecological footprint. Even in the context of climate, compliance doesn't necessarily mean providing a safe and healthy environment. Certainly, a campus can make consequential improvements to its operations in areas of compliance focus. However, many academics would rather focus on a global environmental problem, such as sustainable agriculture or

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social justice, than agree to impact the way they do their work for the sake of a compliance issue. Comprehensive compliance with OSHA standards in campus laboratories requires much more structure than many academics would desire, left to their own devices. Similarly, many campus chemical waste generators would agree that keeping mercury and lead out of the sewers is a good idea. Fewer would agree that training every student, especially those taking science in service courses, on all aspects of the hazardous waste regulations is a good use of pedagogic opportunity. Nor would they necessarily agree that such training directly reduces the campus' ecological footprint to any considerable proportion. Schools with an institutional and individual commitment to compliance rarely come by it willinglyÐoften an institutional concern about environmental and/or safety compliance appears after an inspection, citation, or other adverse outcome. Schools with recent inspection experience have a direct and tangible reason for such integration. The majority of colleges and universities have no such history. A few schools have an unusual conviction about the matter without the driving force of inspections. The rest have to ®nd that kind of value for themselves without any particular drivers. Campus chemical health and safety managers face the challenge, then, of helping students, faculty, and staff ®nd value in integrating safety and environmental compliance into coursework, research and support at the individual level. This is the hard sellÐturning generally unwelcome changes in individual behavior into a show of institutional commitment.

Reference

1. Stuart, R. The Metaphysics of Indoor Air Quality. Paper presented at the Campus Safety Association Annual Conference, Honolulu, HI, July 1995.

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