At Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, where some students pedal to their destinations on communal bikes rather than drive their cars, it would seem there is sympathy for the environment.

But is that affinity for green deep enough to make those students pay $5 extra each semester for their education?

A campus group is pushing ahead this week with a bid to make the school with about 8,000 students unique among Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities by enacting a mandatory fee supporting environmentally friendly projects and awareness programs.

On Friday, organizers belonging to Leave It Green plan to discuss their idea with Slippery Rock's council of trustees, the school's governing board. The meeting is in advance of a campuswide student referendum April 7-9 authorized by the student government association after proponents mustered 700 petition signatures supporting a vote.

The fee, at $10 per student over an academic year, would generate about $80,000 for what is being called The Green Fund, said Dan Cannon, 22, a environmental studies major from Westlake, Ohio, and an organizer with Leave It Green. An advisory board would oversee the fund and dole out money after reviewing environmental applications from students, faculty and others, he said.

The referendum is an advisory vote. If the proposal passes, the group said it will ask trustees to adopt the new fee in June so it can take effect with the 2008-09 academic year.

"This would be such a large step in a green direction for the university and could potentially spark green movements across all 14 state universities," Mr. Cannon said.

Along with tuition of $5,178 annually, full-time students at Slippery Rock each year pay an academic enhancement fee of $517.80; a general service fee of $271.84; a health service fee of $208; a technology fee of $175; a recreation complex fee of $174; and a community building fee of $146.

Larry Brink, student government association president, said much of what Leave It Green wants to do involves building upgrades like installing energy-efficient lighting across campus, adding water conserving motion sensors in restroom sinks and promoting a recycling competition among the residence halls.

"In general, students don't have any issue with what they want to do," he said. "I have heard dissenting opinions about adding another fee. A large portion of college costs are in fees."

Mr. Cannon said the request is reasonable.

"No one wants to pay more for tuition and school. However, we feel that $5 a semester is not asking that much, given the change that would come out of it," he said.

Across the nation, there has been a spike in similar campus campaigns, spurred mainly by student groups able to get the idea to a vote by their peers, said Niles Barnes, projects coordinator with the Lexington, Ky.-based Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education.

"If it's in the range of $2 to $4 a semester, most students don't even notice such an increase," he said. "That's less than lunch."

Nevertheless, schools uneasy about ever-rising college costs sometimes balk at the idea, even if students sanction it, he said.

His organization's Web site lists nearly two dozen schools with mandatory fees to fund renewable energy and energy efficiency, among them the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Oregon, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California at Santa Cruz.

In Pennsylvania, Mercyhurst College students endorsed a Green Fee for sustainable energy that went into effect last fall. The fee is $5 per term per student, or $15 annually, and covers only full-time traditional students, said Mercyhurst spokeswoman Deborah Morton.

At Slippery Rock, the campus green movement is evident in initiatives, from a wind turbine system at the Macoskey Center enabling students to see a working form of alternative energy, to the Green Bike Initiative, in which at least 30 bikes painted green were deployed around campus by the cycling club for student use.

Mr. Brink wouldn't predict the odds of the fee being enacted, but of the vote, he said, "I think they are going to have a majority of the student body agree with them."