The Sustainability Club is hosting the water conservation dorm challenge in order to encourage students to be mindful about their water use habits. The challenge will run through the entire month of April, and the winners will be announced on Saturday, May 1. The winning residence hall will receive a pizza party.
Sustainability Club poster for the water conservation contest. Photo by Claire Myree.
The Buildings and Grounds department is able to see the monthly water bills for each residence hall. The Sustainability Club will compare the water bill from last month with the water bill from this month in order to determine which residence hall has the greatest percent decrease in overall water use.
Jenny Dorsey, president of the Sustainability Club, wants to emphasize to students how important it is to be mindful of water usage because of the environmental impacts and the financial impacts.
“Water conservation has the power to lower tuition,” said Dorsey. “When the school stopped using trays in Marbeck, tuition lowered for about two years. Now that the trays are back, we will probably see an increase in tuition.
In the past, the Sustainability Club has done other conservation challenges such as the energy conservation challenge where students are encouraged to save as much energy as possible by living outside for a week. Even though the club decided against that challenge this year, they still wanted to do something to encourage and emphasize resource conservation. Dorsey believes that the university’s sustainability commitment, along with this year’s civil engagement theme of minimalism and reduction, make conservation efforts very important.
Dorsey also said that the Sustainability Club has received requests from alumni to improve conservation on campus.
“As a university, we have done a poor job of living up to our sustainability commitment,” said Dorsey. “One part of the commitment is to remove auto-flush toilets from campus, but there are still many of these toilets on campus and they waste a lot of water.”
In addition to helping students raise an awareness about the environmental and financial consequences of excessive water use, Dorsey also hopes that this challenge will bring more recognition and student involvement to the Sustainability Club.
“Our hope is that the university will be able to get behind more sustainable commitments if they see that this works really well and that students are engaged,” said Dorsey.
