Susannah Poteet ’28 is a history major and prospective environmental studies minor. She enjoys writing, traveling and waiting for the fourth MUNA album. On campus, she is also involved with Someone You Know, Spotswood Society and Intervarsity. You can contact her at skpoteet@wm.edu.

The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.

Friday, Nov. 14, the Muscarelle Museum of Art opened “Liquid Commonwealth: The Art and Life of Water in Virginia,” featuring art from more than 50 people across the state. The Muscarelle exhibit is defined as one that “explores the essential importance, richness and beauty of water as a defining element of the Commonwealth.” I found the exhibit engaging and moving, and I recommend you pay it a visit. 

“Liquid Commonwealth” is beautiful, thoughtful and necessary — and it feels like hypocrisy. Not the work of the artists and the student curators. I find it hypocritical, however, for a university that has continued to fund and promote artificial intelligence — a technology that requires a depletion of water to exist — to turn around and pay lip service to sustainability. 

Water is important to the Commonwealth. In January 2025, 230,000 people living in Richmond lost access to clean running water during the water crisis. In southwest Virginia, hundreds of homes were destroyed and major lakes polluted during Hurricane Helene in 2024, which was caused by precipitation excess-type weather.

The Chesapeake Bay is a source of thousands of jobs in fishing, tourism and other industries.  In 2024, 1.7 million people visited Shenandoah National Park, many of whom visited the numerous waterfalls on the mountains. The James River is a source of recreation and exercise for millions in Virginia, from the junction of the Cowpasture and Jackson in the Appalachian mountains to the bank of the Chesapeake Bay.

The artwork curated in “Liquid Commonwealth” explores the historical impacts of water. “Vernal” by Caroline Minchew depicts a vernal pool in Kimages, Va. where in 1862, during the Civil War, hundreds of Union soldiers died. The photograph won first place, and is a testament to the memory and importance that water holds for local communities. 

Artificial intelligence necessitates building data centers to run immense analytics on websites and data. These data centers are large warehouses that can use between 110 million and 1.8 billion gallons of water per year, depending on the size of the center. In comparison, the water usage of a small town with 10,000 to 50,000 people is equivalent to one large data center — of which Virginia hosts 150. Virginia is home to the highest concentration of data centers: almost 600 data centers, 150 of which are large data centers. 13% of the world’s data center capacity, and 25% of the Americas data center capacity is in Northern Virginia. According to a study by UC Riverside and UT Arlington, 80% of the water used at data centers evaporates. That means that 80% of 1.8 billion gallons of water — 1.44 billion gallons of water — will evaporate into the atmosphere per year, depleting local freshwater supplies. That’s just one large data center. 

Despite this, the College of William and Mary has chosen to fund several large AI initiatives. In September, the university launched their AI minor. In October, the university launched ChatGPT Edu, a generative AI tool geared for academic institutions. Over the summer, the university launched “16 AI things in 93 days,” a program meant to acclimate students to the usage of AI in academic environments.

In a quote to University Communications, Dean of CDSP Douglas Schmidt ’84, M.A. ’86 said, “We are creating opportunities to apply the technological power of AI to diverse domains, sparking new ideas, challenging assumptions and integrating a wide range of perspectives.”

Throughout all of these initiatives, there was no mention of the environmental impact. 

It is for these reasons that I cannot stomach the explicit inaction and implicit apathy of the College in this “Year of the Environment.” How can we reflect on the ways that water is vital to our state while funding and supporting its depletion? How can we continue to fund AI while choosing to ignore the consequences along the way? 

I understand that the issues of water usage and AI are deeper than this editorial can speak to, and that broader academia has shifted towards AI usage without many guardrails — a shift that the College has little control over. 

I do not want to diminish the real environmental work that has been done this year. 531 geothermal wells are being actively installed to sustainably heat and cool dorms and buildings. Compost and other sustainable lifestyle changes have become easier to implement while at college, thanks to the Student Assembly and Dining Services initiatives. The university launched the Batten School of Coastal and Marine Sciences, allowing more students and faculty to research the ocean’s biodiversity.  

These actions are real, and will have significant impacts on our local communities for the better for years to come. But if we do not engage fully with an issue, such as the environmental costs of AI, then how will we ever solve it? If we continue to sugarcoat new dangers and developments, then we will continue the systems that brought our planet to this point. 

If we work to protect the environment only when it is easy, simple and non-controversial, we will never be able to change the trajectory our planet is on. The main companies that deplete our water, burn fossil fuels and use our land will never make it simple to alter a culture that prioritizes speed and easy solutions. 

I had hoped when the College announced the “Year of the Environment” that they were willing to tackle these difficult questions, willing to grapple with what it means to push sustainability while prioritizing research and academic learning. Instead, the university has decided to keep the systems that incentivize climate change in place and make band-aid fixes to a problem that runs deeper and is more nuanced than at first glance. 

We boast of intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness and community, but to embody these traits we must wrestle honestly with complex issues. I invite the university to prove me wrong, by accounting for the environmental toll of each AI initiative they launch. I invite the university to let us live up to our principles.