Residence halls begin spring Energy Challenge

Twice a year, IU residential halls have participated in an Energy Challenge, a competition that encourages students to conserve energy and water.

Beginning today and continuing through March 11, IU students in 10 residential halls will compete to conserve the most amount of energy. Wright and Forest quads are not participating due to construction.

Although the competition has existed at IU for several years, this challenge will be part of the Campus Conservation Nationals, including colleges and universities from around the country.

Sophomore Mary Roper, director of environmentalism for the Residence Halls Association, said they are looking to boost the number of students involved this year.
Roper said she wants more of an educational aspect to the competition that will help students develop new behaviors.

“Our main goal is to help people develop different lifestyle changes that will help people save water and energy,” Roper said.

Roper said directors of RHA are currently doing a “base line,” which measures how much energy and water is used during a two-week period to determine how much energy is used, in preparation of the challenge. Throughout the competition, the directors will be comparing the baseline to the two-week period of competition, in order to find the residence hall with the greatest percentage reduction.

During the fall 2011 and spring 2012 competition, Ashton Center won the energy challenge under Roper’s direction. 

“It’s hard to win back to back,” Roper said.

This year, Roper said that they will have several events going on throughout the weeks to encourage student involvement, such as the “lights out” movie event at Wright.

Some resident assistants said they are working hard to promote the event throughout the dorms. Emily McKnight, resident assistant at Foster Quad, is working on promoting the event to get more students involved.

McKnight said she believes too few students know about the challenge, which is why she thinks a RA promotion is an important way to get students involved. 

“On my floor, we have flyers in all of the bathrooms on ways you can reduce your environmental footprint,” McKnight said.