Can Choate be Greener than the Big Green? Choate Vies With Rival Deerfield to See Who Can Save More
By Zoe Gorman ‘09
News Staff Reporter
This winter brings the first annual Green Cup Challenge. The Green Cup, which begins this afternoon, Friday, Jan 26th, is an interscholastic energy-saving competition hosted by Phillips Exeter Academy. Fifteen New England prep schools are competing in the challenge, some more actively than others. Choate will win an extra “President’s Day” in the spring, a surprise holiday from classes, if it can save more energy than its traditional rival school, Deerfield Academy.
The Green Cup Challenge was originally intended to be an inter-dorm competition, which was how it was started at Exeter. However, because many dorm electricity meters calculate energy usage differently, this concept was a difficult one to realize. On the other hand, the interscholastic competition was more viable. Jeff Rosen ’07, President of the Student Council with the help of Mr. James Yanelli of Student Activities and Mr. Steven Cahoon from Facilities Services organized Choate’s participation in the event.
The idea of the competition has led many Choate students to wonder if the community will really learn anything about energy conservation or whether it will simply compete for the prize. To this, Rosen said, “As much as I’d rather have people conserve [energy] for the sake of conserving, it’s still not bad that people are willing to conserve for an incentive.”
According to Rosen, last year the Green Cup took place between only three schools. This year it has expanded significantly. The competition even includes small schools without meters that cannot officially compete, but can still be part of the “spirit of the competition.” Many schools are taking an active interest in the welfare of the environment.
“The long term goal is that people will take these lessons that they’ve learned over these four weeks, realize the things they did to conserve, and realize that there doesn’t have to be a competition; there doesn’t have to be an incentive to continue doing what we’re doing,” continued Rosen.
In the last year, Choate spent over $1.5 million on energy. If the school can save a small percentage of that over the next month then it will be saving a large sum while also reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, doing its small part to help slow the effects of global warming.
“Schools who participated in the Green Cup last year found that their reduction in energy output was long lasting,” stated Rosen. “They made those life-style adjustments and from then on, things have been really smooth.”
Student environmentalist Janice Chung ’09 put down her book on global warming to say, “I think this is a good competition because it’s actually helping the environment and it motivates people to save energy.”
Yet her roommate, Stephanie Choi ’09 argued, “Yeah maybe for these four-weeks! Do you really think people will keep turning their lights off?”
“I think they’re going to have to make signs within buildings because once you leave the meetings, students forget about what they just saw,” suggested Katherine Vera ‘09. “If you put posters in the dorms I think they’ll do it more. I know President’s Day is such a big deal here,” she added.
Throughout the contest the Student Council will give people tips on ways to conserve energy through signs and e-mails. Although Rosen is sure that students will make mistakes the first time around, he hopes that the annual Green Cup Challenge will be an educational experience for everyone and that Choate will improve in years to come.
Rebecca Brown ’10 shares this opinion. “I think it’s a good way for people to conserve energy. They’ll realize that it’s so easy to conserve and it’s easy to change their habits. And then they will and it’s good incentive for the second President’s Day.”
However sophomore Jason White ’09 is a little more skeptical. “I think that there’s going to be a lot of kids who are not going to care at all. They’re going to do what they want to do and there’s a lot of small appliances like computers and stuff that take up a lot of electricity and I’m not really sure this a really going to work unless everyone is really excited about this President’s Day thing.”
To those students who are not willing to make a conscious effort to turn off their lights and other appliances Rosen had three things to say to them upon announcing the Green Cup at a recent school meeting: “you do not care about the environment; you do not want a day off of school; you like Deerfield Academy.”
The competition offers ecologically-themed prizes for the winner, yet Choate’s goal for this year and for the President’s Day is to just beat Deerfield. It is Deerfield Academy’s first year as a participant as well, so Choate’s chances of success are very fair.
“Since I became president of the Student Council, I really wanted to have more president’s days and I realized that [Headmaster] Shanahan’s kind of into this give and take—if you’re going to ask for something he wants something in return---and I realized that it would be kind of a good match,” said Rosen, acknowledging that there would be better student participation if they offered a short term incentive. “[Shanahan] realized that as an institution, Choate in going to benefit from this because it will save a lot of money and the school, with a conscience, will be saving a lot of energy, not outputting as much carbon dioxide into the air.”
Although Choate has made some efforts to conserve energy in the past (there are stickers on lights in the dormitories that read, “Conserve energy” and there are also new lights in academic buildings with sensors), the community plans to become much more active from now on. A recycling club has been started and presidents Bailee Sims ’07 and John Aloian ’08 have been working to get the message out. Some things student environmentalists urge Choate to change are leaving lights on in academic buildings for no reason, leaving music playing in computers all day, and leaving windows open in the winter with the heat blasting. The hope is that the Green Cup will encourage Choate to get on the right path.
Future efforts to become more conscientious about the environment are already in motion. The school has been looking into investments in wind energy, and this week, the Board of Trustees and an outside expert are meeting with the Student Life Committee to discuss energy conservation. The Student Council is also hoping to show Al Gore’s non-political but very powerful, “An Inconvenient Truth” at a special program in the spring. The documentary discusses the “truth” of global warming and its potential effects.
This year’s energy-conserving theme is part of a greater plan to get the Student Council more involved in real-world issues.
“Student Councils—at least those that I’ve seen while I’ve been here—tend to focus on things that, while they seem important, are not bigger than Choate,” said Rosen. “We could talk about sit down lunches; we could talk about extending internet hours, because these are the things that people come to us complaining about. But the reality is we have to do more. We have to be looking beyond Choate to what we can do outside of our community.”
“It’s all up to the students,” concluded Rosen, “We have to do our part and then maybe we can be a part of something bigger.”
