ustin Segall and Anthony Vitarelli are explaining what not to say if you are out to win support for a grassroots environmental movement--especially if, like them, you're a couple of sophomores trying to get the powers-that-be to take you seriously.

" We should make Duke green." Segall's voice takes on a higher pitch. His eyes widen into a look of feigned earnestness and naïveté. As if on cue, Vitarelli matches the mocking tone and expression: "I love the environment, don't you? Wouldn't it be great if we could do some environmental 'stuff?' "

Rewind. Same situation, the Segall-Vitarelli way: "We come in there firing," says Vitarelli. "We have to show them that we know what we're talking about and that we're serious about this and that we're not just some idealistic kids that think doing this will just be 'swell.' "

Segall and Vitarelli are the founders and co-presidents of the Duke University Greening Initiative, known by its acronym DUGI (pronounced "doogie"). The initiative, which began as a gleam in Segall's eye freshman year and took baby steps as a project for a public-policy class fall semester, has evolved over nine months into an organization with twenty-plus members, including undergraduate and graduate students in the schools of the environment, engineering, divinity, law, medicine, and business; a $25,000 seed grant from private donors, with more funding likely to follow; and heavy-hitting advisers, including the former dean and two members of the board of visitors of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

Since September, the duo has enlisted the support of everyone from President Nannerl O. Keohane to Jerry Black, director of facilities management at Duke. By February, what had begun as a campaign to get administrative support for green buildings had evolved into a more comprehensive, campus-wide "greening initiative."

" Justin and Anthony didn't have a vision just to implement green buildings," says Mandy Schmitt, a joint-degree candidate in law and environmental management, who is a member of DUGI's executive committee. "They had a very articulate, detailed vision of what is a green building, what is a green campus, and they realize the political channels you must go through and how you can unite that with the environmental vision. They're also constantly coming to the table with new project ideas and new people we should talk to and how we can raise money."

DUGI members are now working to develop a strategic plan, to set up a grant program of $50,000 a year to pay for green projects, to incorporate environmental issues into the curriculum, and to build partnerships with other universities in the area. This summer, they will finance nine research projects, including an inventory of successful programs at other universities, as well as a preliminary survey of greening efforts already under way at Duke.

The organization's vision statement gives a sense of just how high the students have set the bar for themselves: "The Duke University Greening Initiative will integrate environmental stewardship into every local, national, and global facet of life at Duke University." Segall and Vitarelli say they won't be satisfied until Duke becomes the "national leader" among colleges and universities on the issue of environmental sustainability.

" When I get on board with a project, I don't see why it can't go ten times further than people plan it to go," says Vitarelli. "Why can't we be the national leader? I mean, if we prioritize, why can't we?"

" We just see that there's no reason we can't go all the way," adds Segall.

Segall and Vitarelli are an unlikely pairing. Segall is a Conservative Jew from Denver, Colorado; Vitarelli is Roman Catholic, from Voorhees, New Jersey. But not since Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland decided to put on a show has there been a more energetic, enthusiastic, or dynamic duo. And, while it is too soon to predict the ultimate success of the partnership's efforts, their unusual combination of passion tempered with pragmatism has gotten them far, fast. Segall says he has learned the efficacy of tenacity: "My outlook on things is, I will never take no for an answer. And people can tell me as much as they want how 'You're not going to be able to get that done--you're just one person, you're just a college sophomore.' I say, 'So what?' You know? 'So what!' I'll do more than somebody else, because I'm young, and I have the energy."

There's a certain synergy that emerges when the two come together. Segall is the racing engine, revved up, ready to lay rubber in a dozen directions. Vitarelli is the cruise control. Edward E. May, a joint M.B.A. and environmental-management candidate who serves on DUGI's executive committee, recalls sitting next to Segall during a lecture. "While the speaker was talking, he kept trying to talk to me. Finally, I looked at him and said, 'Justin, do you ever stop talking?' He constantly keeps people going--poking and prodding people--and you know it took that to get DUGI off the ground. Anthony is very mature for his age, and he brings that level of maturity necessary to say, 'We're very serious about this. We're not just a couple of students off after a wild hare.'" Simon B. Rich Jr. '67, one of DUGI's advisers, adds, "they are classic social entrepreneurs--a perfect pair."

They may also be emblematic of a new type of activism for the new millennium. Students who've been building rÈsumÈs since middle school for admission to top-tier universities like Duke are often wise beyond their years in the ways of the world. Instead of fighting the system by leafleting or staging sit-ins, they're working it--grassroots idealism meets boardroom savvy.

That doesn't mean there isn't real passion at work. Segall embraced environmentalism at a young age. Raised in Denver, he's an enthusiastic mountain climber. He talks about the first time he scaled a peak higher than 10,000 feet, Mount Zirkel, near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was a ten-year-old camper on a wilderness outing. "I got to the top. There was a beautiful view--360 degrees--the most gorgeous natural thing you could have." As he turned his head, scanning the horizon, "in the northwest, I see a huge plume of smoke going up into the air, and I turn to my counselor and ask him, 'What's that?' And he tells me, "That's the smoke from the Hayden coal-fired power plant.' And it was just such a black mark on such a beautiful view. And I said, 'I don't like it.' And he said, 'Well, do something about it.'

" I said, 'Okay.'"

In middle school, Segall helped develop a pilot program that used a wetlands system to clean up a polluted stream. The summer before his freshman year at Duke in 2001, he worked in the Denver office of the Environmental Protection Agency. He focused on green buildings and other types of sustainable development. Then, first semester freshman year, he signed up for the FOCUS program, an interdisciplinary course of study centering on a particular theme, in this case global environmental change. In a class on climate change, "We were discussing what some other schools had done in relation to the Kyoto Protocol," Segall recalls. "And one of the professors challenged us. He said, 'Who's going to do that here?' And nobody put their hand up, and then I said, 'I'll do it.'"