As summer approaches, and we find ourselves studying through heatwaves in stuffy libraries and college cafés, perhaps global warming and the climate crisis becomes harder to ignore. Colleges have come under greater scrutiny for their role in exacerbating such global threats in recent years. The Climate League of Oxford and Cambridge (CLOC) is a coalition of academics and students who aim to confront and hold colleges accountable for these actions. I recently sat down with Will and Tilly, two members of CLOC, to discuss their recently released college ranking on the basis of sustainability.

Could you introduce CLOC and what you do?

Will: CLOC is an independent, student-led assessment of Oxbridge College’s environmental policies, and has been running for about five summers.

“The University tends to get a lot more press and the colleges can go under the radar. It’s really important that they’re held to account”

We assess colleges based on their policies on the website and we send them a questionnaire asking them about the policies, which they can fill in. Unfortunately, colleges often don’t, so then we have to go through their website and documents.

Why do you think this type of work is important?

Tilly: I think one of the key things is that, because the colleges are completely separate from the University, they are not held to the same policies that the University has. The University tends to get a lot more press around what they are doing, and the colleges can go under the radar a bit. It’s really important that they’re held to account.

How do you incorporate criticism, such as the idea your rankings are too harsh, into your methods?

Will: We always encourage feedback from colleges when we send them the results. This year in particular, we said we can potentially update rankings if they send us more information. We also engage with student groups within colleges and green societies as well, because we want to encourage this dialogue between green officers in colleges, and the bursars, and the masters.

“A key part of CLOC is transparency”

Tilly: Another thing is that the mark scheme is sort of purposefully harsh. Even if you’re at the top of the ranking, it still recognises that there’s a long way to go, so it’s not giving people a false sense of security.

Do you think that using publicly available information limits your investigations in any way?

Will: A key part of CLOC is transparency. We emphasise to colleges in all our communications with them that if information isn’t out there, then we can’t mark it. We want to encourage colleges to be transparent about what they’re doing in terms of climate action. Students have a right to know.

Tilly: Another thing to emphasise is that we send a questionnaire to all the colleges with the exact questions they’ll be marked against. What tends to happen is that the colleges don’t respond to the questionnaire!

Do you think students have a responsibility to hold their colleges accountable and criticise some of the more problematic actions which they can take?

Will: That’s difficult, because obviously we acknowledge that students have lots of pressures on their time. I think we particularly want to encourage green officers or green societies who are already involved in trying to improve their colleges’ environmental action by providing them with more information. It’s colleges that need to improve their leadership, not students.

Tilly: Maybe responsibility is not the right word. I feel like many people come to Cambridge and are studying something because they want to help with the environment in some way. It can be quite disheartening to show up and realise that your college is actually a big actor in harming the environment, so I think often students do feel like they should be pressuring their college, and they do have some power in that respect, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a responsibility for them.

Do you think that in-college loyalty can motivate people to demand accountability from their colleges?

Tilly: Yeah, definitely! A lot of people come to us saying that they’re shocked and disappointed with their college’s score, and so they’ll bring it up with their college committees, and so that’s fantastic!