Campus groups get ready
for ‘Doin’ it in the Dark’
■The conservation campaign
encourages students and staff
to find ways to save energy
By Diane Huber
Oregon Daily Emerald
Students will soon see “Doin’ it
in the Dark” fliers hung around
campus — but they aren’t promot
ing anything kinky.
The fliers, as well as the stickers
on light switches and computer
monitors, are a part of ASUO’s en
ergy campaign.
The campaign is designed to en
courage students and faculty to be
energy-conscious, ASUO Elections
Coordinator Courtney Hight said.
The senior environmental studies
major is in charge of the energy cam
paign, but students in various or
ganizations around campus, includ
ing the Ecological Design Center,
the Energy Studies in Buildings
Laboratory and OSPIRG, have also
dedicated themselves to a campus
wide effort to reduce energy use.
The energy project began after a $30
energy fee appeared without warning
on students’ bills fall term. Hight said
she felt like the administration
“slipped in” the fee when students
were gone for the summer. While the
energy fee has been lowered to $20 a
term, Hight’s goal is to make sure the
school is taking all measures neces
sary to save energy, she said.
“We (as students) need to pay,
we’re willing and we know the
money has to come from some
where,” she said. “But we want to
conserve energy. ”
Hight said the campaign’s focus
is about more than saving students
money on their bills — she hopes
students and faculty will turn out
lights when they leave a room and
turn off a computer when they’re
done using it without any thought.
“I want to instill these values,” she
said. “And maybe (students) will con
tinue using them in their daily lives. ”
As part of the campaign, ASUO
I
representatives will be going into
classrooms and residence halls to
tell students what they can do to
save energy.
“We’ve been getting a really posi
tive response from people,” Hight
said. “Many students aren’t aware
that they pay an energy fee, and
they’re not aware how easy it is to
save energy and reduce their elec
tric bills.”
If Hight has her way, stickers will
soon appear above light switches
and on computer screens around
“We (as students) need
to pay, we’re willing and we
know the money has
to come from somewhere.
.. .But we wantto conserve
energy”
Courtney Hight
ASUO elections coordinator
campus that read “Lights OFF Con
servation ON” and “Conserving En
ergy = Saving YOU $$. ”
The No. 1 money saver will be
lowering heat in classrooms to 68
degrees, she said. But computer and
electrical equipment use also hike
up the bill significantly.
Hight said she’d like computer
labs to turn off a portion of their
computers during slow hours.
But EMU lab assistant Walt Nor
blad said turning off computers in
the labs isn’t necessary because they
automatically go into sleep mode
when no one is using tjhem, and it
uses only about 50 watts versus the
approximately 125 watts the com
puters use normally.
Still, Hight said, if you save those
50 watts and multiply that by all the
unused computers around campus,
the energy savings would be visible.
While Hight is busy raising
awareness, ESBL is in the process of
auditing all the buildings on cam
pus to see what conservation efforts
have been taken and what still
needs to be done.
ESBL research associate Jeff Kline
said the energy inefficiency of some
buildings on campus is due to old
windows, poor ventilation and weak
insulation. He said the department is
looking for ways to improve building
efficiency in these areas. The depart
ment also is replacing light bulbs
with more energy efficient bulbs.
But more needs to be done, he
added. For example, right now
ESBL can only monitor how much
electricity is used in buildings on
campus, he said. Buildings are heat
ed by steam, and there is no way to
monitor how much heat most of the
individual buildings use, he said.
And while the department has
data comparing electricity use in
each building on campus, Kline
said electricity building totals can’t
be broken down to determine
which components within the
building are using the most electric
ity. In other words, he said, there is
no concrete explanation for why the
University Health Center used more
than 80 kwh per square foot be
tween June 2000 and May 2001
while the Knight Library used un
der 10 kwh per square foot.
OSPIRG is helping with the stu
dent outreach part of the cam
paign. OSPIRG New Energy Future
coordinator Janis Austrmuehle
said the bottom line is, “If you save
energy, you reduce the impact you
have on the earth. ”
New Energy Future is a broader
campaign to raise awareness about
long-term energy alternatives —
not just the short-term goal of sav
ing students’ money, the freshman
environmental studies major said.
“Students have to stop thinking
short term and thinking, ‘Oh, it
doesn’t affect me,”’ she said.
E-mail reporter Diane Huber
at dianehuber@dailyemerald.com.
1
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