A Hyundai-Fueled Outcry

Students express frustration regarding Hyundai Challenge

Santa Clara beat out Loyola Marymount University (LMU) and Pepperdine University for a $100,000 grant after winning the Hyundai Sustainability Challenge in Nov. 2019. 

For the three-week challenge students, faculty and staff members refilled their personal water bottles and scanned a sticker each time they did so to earn one refill made at Santa Clara. 

By the end of the challenge, Santa Clara had beaten both Pepperdine and LMU, surpassing LMU by 732 bottle refills, or sticker scans. While the school spirit and competitiveness was high amongst most students, several students voiced their concerns about the challenge after believing it fell short of its intended purpose. 

“I got asked multiple times to scan for the sake of not even filling up my water bottle, which to me just entirely goes against the whole point of the challenge,” junior Liam Swanson said. 

To increase participation in the challenge, members of Associated Student Government (ASG) promoted the challenge.

They presented in their classes and to Residence Life, baked cookies and brownies that were given as rewards for scanning, tabled at basketball games and raffled off items like AirPods and gift cards. 

“For the most part, we were telling [students] to scan in front of us to make sure they were actually refilling it when we asked them to refill it,” sophomore senator Raul Orellana said. “But I wouldn’t be able to say that every single time someone scanned they were actually filling up their water bottles.”

Sierra Barsten, the director of sustainability of the Associated Students of LMU, said the situation was similar at LMU. 

“It was a tough balance between wanting to maximize participation and knowing that people probably weren’t filling their bottles every time,”Barsten said. “I feel like that was kind of an inevitable aspect of the challenge, and I wish there was some way to actually ensure that engaging in sustainability was a required part of participation.”

In the Fill It Forward app, Cupanion stated that throughout the challenge the three universities saved 792 pounds of plastic, 3,962 pounds of waste, 75,069 kWH of power and 57,948 pounds of waste. 

Although if students were scanning stickers more than the amount of times they filled up their water bottle every day, these numbers are inaccurate. 

Erik Thomas, senior group manager of Experiential Marketing at Hyundai, stated they expected the schools to participate based on the honor system.

“We had elements in place with our partner, Cupanion, to monitor this kind of action and it didn’t impact the final results of the contest,” Thomas said.

However, the way the challenge was implemented led students, including Swanson, to believe that it was solely a marketing tactic. 

“Initially I was kind of skeptical and then as I learned more about it and how they were making us compete with other schools, I just got upset,” Swanson said. “This is just a marketing ploy for them and isn’t actually focusing on sustainability.”

On Jan. 13, five student leaders from ASG will meet with members of the university administration to help consult on how the $100,000 grant will be used. 

These student leaders are asking for the grant money to be used towards water bottle refilling stations. 

Although, Pingali and Orellana believe that university administration will push to use the money for new solar panels on the North Campus Parking Garage. 

“I really hope ASG will decide what to do with the money as we represent the students, and that’s the most important credit we could ask for,” Pingali said. 

Pingali was worried students would not have as much control over where the grant money went after she and other ASG members were not given the recognition that was planned. Before the celebratory party on Dec. 6 where Santa Clara received the $100,000 grant from Hyundai, four members of ASG were notified that they would be the ones accepting the check on the university’s behalf. 

This was due to the extreme level of work they put into making Santa Clara’s victory possible. 

Those senators included seniors Pingali and Erik Echeona, first-year Cole Brunelli and sophomore Orellana.

Although at the event, university administrators ended up being pictured with the check.

“They called us up after they had already given the check to the administrators,” Orellana said. “So all of the news articles had the administrators plastered with the check on there but none of the students got credit for that.” 

Pingali said this left the students worried that administration would get control over where the money would go in the end. 

Ever since, Pingali has been adamant that ASG members should be included in the decision-making process of what the money goes towards.

“Administration has been very accommodating, so we will make sure this money is used effectively,” Pingali said. 

Contact Kyle de la Fuente at kdelafuente@scu.edu or call (408) 554-4852.