Publicity Needed For Cup

The Green Cup, a competition between the houses and groupings of the first-year dormitories, announced its winners last week and residents of Eliot House, Lowell House and the South Yard dormitories are currently enjoying their new T-shirts or coffee mugs. What a nice surprise.

Of course, while winning an award should be a happy surprise, winning the Green Cup is often very surprising--it's fair to say many students had no idea they were participating in a campus-wide contest.

Why is it that students--even those who won--had so little knowledge of the nature of the competition? After all, the houses and dorms have been in competition with each other to conserve and recycle for the entire year.

Aside from a few ads in campus publications announcing the winners, little is ever heard of Green Cup activities. And this lack of publicity or information alone means that the Green Cup will fail in its mission to increase conservation among students. It is a good idea begging for a decent shot at succeeding.

As students, our phone bills remind us not to indulge in long-distance pointless conversation, but we get no such encouragement to turn off our lights or refrain from half-hour showers. Since we do not pay our own electric or water bills, we are not aware of when our use escalates or drops off.

While I certainly don't want to pay my own utilities, I wouldn't mind a reminder to conserve. Which is exactly the reason Green Cup should have a greater campus presence.

The Green Cup concept itself is not flawed. Pitting each living unit against the others in an attempt to conserve electricity and promote recycling is a great idea and entirely workable. If students knew more about it, the competition might have a measurable effect.

For instance, if the former totals the house were trying to beat were posted in the recycling centers along with the current monthly consumption, students would at least be aware of how close they are to beating the numbers.

What's more, as the time for accounting came up, people might even bring in the bag of newspapers gathering dust in their rooms or the ready-to-collapse pizza box pyramid down to the recycling room. The last-ditch effort to bring the number down might turn into a massive room cleaning, beneficial to students for hygiene purposes if nothing else.

At the very worst, those above the three-year consumption average the Green Cup identifies as a goal might see the increase and be embarrassed enough to do something about it.

Of course, the students could use some help bringing down their use, particularly of electricity. Overheated (or underheated) rooms are not just uncomfortable, but wasteful. Although the superintendents insist windows should never be opened to dispense of excess heat, few students are willing to live in a sauna.

However, more importantly, I think one of the best ways to reduce electricity use on campus might be to stop using the environmentally-conscious light bulbs that are the bane of every dorm dweller.

As every student knows, should you want to have any eyesight left when you receive your diploma, you cannot rely on Harvard lighting during late night study seesions. Instead, students troop to the Coop and plunk down their $20 for the halogen lamp. This is hardly an exaggeration: the number of halogen lamps per room on campus is certainly beyond the n+1 ratio.

If our overhead lights actually illuminated our rooms instead of feebly glowing, each student might be plugging one less thing into their sockets.

With a rejuvenated Green Cup and lightened dorm rooms, energy consumption on campus might experience a sizable, orchestrated drop. That's a drop in the rankings even administrators could be proud of--particularly when the utility bill arrives in the mailbox.

Valerie J. MacMillan's column appears on alternate Thursdays.