Freshmen responded with the most enthusiasm to the Save Power and Reduce Costs contest, which pitted residence halls against each other in a contest to save the most energy in October. Of the 46 participating residence halls, French, McLane and Hinman halls came out on top in close competition.
With dorm energy use rising each year, the SPARC contest challenged dorms to save the most energy from Oct. 1 to Nov. 1. The goal is to help students lower their energy use in the long term. At the end of the month, the dorm with the greatest decrease in energy use was awarded with a dinner catered by a Hanover restaurant.
French, a residence hall in the predominantly-freshman River Cluster, won with an 18 percent energy savings. McLane and Hinman followed close behind with savings of 17.8 percent and 17.5 percent, respectively.
Freshmen have traditionally been the most involved and performed the best in the contest, according to SPARC Intern Pierre-Jean Nguyen '03. North Hall, an upperclassman dorm, ended up increasing energy use by 34 percent during the competition.
"The UGAs reminded us, and there were signs up everywhere." French resident Abigail Adams '06 said. "The lights in the bathrooms were always off."
"We try to hype people up to save energy," Environmental Conservation Organization coordinator Oliver Bernstein '03 said. "People will really get sort of militant about it and have fun with it ... so we've seen the awareness side work."
ECO suggested students save energy by turning off their computers instead of putting them to sleep; turning off lights in dorm rooms, bathrooms, study rooms and laundry rooms and cleaning the coils on the back of their refrigerators.
"Small fridges are notoriously inefficient," environmental science Professor Andy Friedland said. "One of the biggest unnecessary energy users is computers, either left on or even in sleep mode."
Although sleep mode does cut energy usage by 61 to 67 percent in iMacs and Dell desktops, Friedland and ECO suggest students turn computers all the way off and cut energy usage by 100 percent. Shutting down and starting up a computer uses less energy than leaving a computer in sleep mode.
In class, Friedland has proposed placing a power plant in the middle of the Dartmouth Green.
"If people were made to see the consequences of their energy use, they might alter their behavior," Friedland said. "Having a smoke stack in the middle of the Dartmouth Green, belching out a little more black smoke each time you flip on a light switch, might help."
Bernstein sees one fundamental roadblock for the SPARC program. "We've had trouble because people get psyched in the first week and after that they begin to lose interest," Bernstein said.
ECO would like to host a more regular program, like a SPARC week once a month, but because the College only gets its energy meters read once a month, they cannot run shorter contests more often, according to Bernstein.
"In the future -- the distant future -- we'd like to see the College switch to a system of automated metering," Bernstein said. "This monitoring system would allow students to access their dorm and campus energy-use statistics immediately."
Although operating a computerized system would cost the college more money, Bernstein said that the system would eventually pay for itself, as the College currently has to pay to have its meters read.
SPARC plans to expand to affinity housing and Greek dorms next term, according to Nguyen. The prizes also vary from term to term. In the past, dorms have been awarded prizes such as free massages.
When SPARC was founded in 1998, the program ran for the duration of the term and students were awarded with cash prizes. However, the dorms couldn't use their programming prize money from the Office of Residential Life until the next term, when some of the students had already moved out. ECO decided to change this policy, and now the program duration and the prizes have changed.
SPARC is currently working on advertising to more students, and it is planning a "turn off the lights" theme week sometime in the next month.
