A team from Students in Free Enterprise is starting this year’s dorm energy competition. The competition to see which dorm can save the most energy will last until the end of March.
Due to energy inefficiency in some dorms, students living in 17 college-owned buildings are asked to be mindful of their energy usage. The dorm that saves the most energy will win a prize to make their dorm more enjoyable to inhabit.
Working in conjunction with maintenance, the team hopes to save the college $5,000 through the actions of students being energy conscious and by giving buildings on campus energy-efficient facelifts.
“The dorms right now are super inefficient. What we’re trying to do is just get people to think about it, to realize ‘if I turn off this light switch, if I’m not in the room anyway, I’m going to save the college some money,’” said sophomore Sam Ryskamp, leader of the project team.
The team, calling themselves the Hillsdale College WISE Guys (We’re Into Saving Energy), is having an “interdorm energy-saving smackdown, featuring classic dorm rivalries, cutthroat competition, and mind-blowing prizes” according to their Facebook page.
“We’re not here as part of the ‘green’ movement. We’re not crazy environmentalists,” Ryskamp said.
The dorms are split into three divisions: big dorms, small dorms, and Greek housing.
Twenty percent of the money saved by the competition will go towards the prizes which are chosen by the winning dorms from a list compiled by the WISE Guys with RA input.
The prizes will be at least $100 and possibly up to $1,000 depending on how well the competition goes.
All money saved that does not go to prizes will still be part of the dorm budgets, money used by the RAs and house directors that will directly benefit students.
“We’re not trying to get people to freeze to death in their dark rooms huddled together in their basement. Although, if they want to do that, they’ll save money and they’ll probably win the competition,” Ryskamp said. “But our goal is to basically just trim some off the edges.”
