This Thanksgiving the Sustainability Office may be coming to a dorm near you.
Turkey Day Energy Rush, an event organized by the Sustainability Office, aims to increase student awareness about responsibility towards energy conservation. The Energy Rush is part of Sustainability’s “Do It in the Dark” competition between residence halls, which ends Nov. 30. The Energy Rush will be held on Sept. 22 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Harris Field.
Matthew Peterson, chair of the IRC’s Sustainability Committee, said the event is an opportunity to get students together to think about their resource use and conservation.
“The point of the Energy Rush is to get students out onto Harris Field to get pumped about energy conservation,” Peterson said. “All attending students will then be a part of a team, or teams, that ‘rush’ through the residence halls to knock on doors and get residents thinking and excited about saving energy.”
Peterson said the Energy Rush specifically aims at challenging and encouraging students to change their attitudes about energy consumption, and to get them excited about being more sustainable through energy conservation. The volunteers will also remind residents to turn off and remove all electrical appliances and other devices before leaving for Thanksgiving Break.
Barry Olson, associate director of University Housing-Facilities, said the awareness of one’s energy use is critical and campaigns such as these go a long way in educating students about how they can reduce their consumption.
“Students are generally not aware of how much energy they are using, and so awareness is critical, which will give them a sense of what their consumption is over a period of time, say a week, two weeks or even a month,” Olson said. “It gives them [students] a chance to take up conservation measures. Competition certainly drives conservation.”
In light of recent budget cuts, the University may find such measures helpful in reducing its expenditure and redirect money to more pressing matters.
“Not only is it financially important, but it also reduces our greenhouse gas emissions,” Olson said. “We all have a responsibility to conserve and reduce our emissions. Down the road the costs of energy, water, electricity etc. are only going to rise, so we need to be good stewards and act responsibly.”
David Dean, outreach coordinator for the Sustainability Office, said it will create a positive impact in developing awareness on campus.
“It will be students advising students on how they can make an impact,” Dean said.
Peterson said the Rush event is an “important milestone” for the University.
It will utilize student volunteers to move through the Residence Halls and encourage fellow students to turn off their lights and continue to save energy, both for the sake of competition and for the larger goal of conserving energy to have less of an impact on our planet,” he said.
Peterson also said the competition has some other advantages as well.
“The competition provides a few incentives: bragging rights for winning Residence Halls who conserves the most energy, of course,” Peterson said. “Also, the winning Residence Hall is given an awesome prize at the end of the Energy Competition.”
