At the University of Rochester, showering for too long could end up as an extra bill on tuition. Leaving the lights on could also end with the same fate.

Students for Green Research and Sustainability, a group formed at Rochester to address sustainability issues on campus, is pushing for taxes on its students’ on-campus energy use from showers to lights.

Its ‘Design for a More Energy Efficient Campus’ was just recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative, and the group plans to penalize students up to $100 for wasting energy.

‘There’s a large level of apathy of people in our age group. They don’t actually care about anyone but themselves,’ said Gordon Jaquith, a senior at Rochester and a member of SGRS. ‘An incentive will work well as a shock therapy for now, but in the end, student attitudes will need to change profoundly.’

SGRS wants to make students more aware of the impact of their everyday activities, Jaquith said.

The group encourages incoming freshmen to apply for positions as EcoReps to help alert the university community of global warming’s potential dangers.

EcoReps would be responsible for promoting moderate energy use on campus through weekly meetings with hall residents and various environmental activities on campus – a program which could possibly come to Syracuse University.

Rick Martin, the principle project analyst for the Sustainability Division at SU, is currently leading the effort to conduct a Greenhouse Gas Inventory covering all emissions resulting from SU operations.

‘Most undergraduate students have never paid electric bills on any regular basis,’ he said. ‘They live at home, they come live on campus, and all their bills are put into one number that disappears into their tuition.’

Still, he said he has seen an increase in plug usage. He said he has seen dorm rooms with four lights on, a television, a cell phone charger plugged in and two refrigerators. He said this is an abuse of the electrical situation and questioned its necessity.

Brown University, Yale University, Stanford University and Tufts University have all seen improvements in energy conservation since starting an EcoRep program on their campuses.

SGRS also proposes that universities install the type of software which lets students monitor their own energy use on the Web.

‘I would be opposed to paying more,’ said Alex Rabinowitz, senior and former RA of Sadler and Lawrinson halls at SU. ‘There’s no justification for it. There would be tons of complaints, letters from parents. It would cause a lot more problems than it would solve.’

Students at SU and Rochester seem equally adamant in their opposition to financial penalties.

‘We found that it’s strictly a financial issue,’ Jaquith said. ‘Paying so much for the privilege of being here makes people wary of paying anything extra, even getting kickbacks. They feel that they pay so much so that they don’t have to worry about it.’

But Keisha Payson, coordinator for a Sustainable Bowdoin at Bowdoin College in Maine and head of the EcoRep program at the college, has seen the success of the program and believes it is an important change.

At Bowdoin, there has been a 25 percent reduction in electricity use since the program was first launched.

‘It does work; we’ve been doing it for seven years now,’ she said. ‘Students who didn’t use to get involved get involved in this.’

But at SU, Martin is skeptical whether students will mimic what has happened at Bowdoin. He said most students are not used to modifying their behavior to save money.

‘If this were an apartment building, they would pay attention to when the lights were on and off,’ he said. ‘In the dorms, I don’t know if that’s necessarily going to work.’

hddubans@syr.edu

Published on October 28, 2008 at 12:00 pm