James Madison University - Index

James Madison University - Madison Magazine - Summer 2009 - Index

Competing to conserve
Students reduce energy use in Village Green Wars
BY MICHELLE HITE (’88)
Q&A
logue. For example, in curricular and cocurricular
training, activities, and the campus
landscape itself. Really the key part
is “informed.” It’s not jumping on a bandwagon;
it’s going to take some effort. Maybe
we’ll even find an alternative to the overused
and abused word “green.”
And the winner is ... the environment.
And some pretty cool
students from Frederikson Hall.
For the fourth year, students living
in the nine Village residence
halls competed to see who could
create the biggest reduction in energy
usage during Village Green Wars.
Students living in Frederikson Hall
won this year’s competition, held March
23 to April 17, by decreasing their electrical
energy use and water consumption by
just over 10 percent.
This year, for the first time, students
and administrators could see rates of
energy and water consumption in select
residence halls thanks to Building Dashboard,
a Web-based application. Special
meters, installed on the electric and
water lines of all Village residence halls,
supply data to the Dashboard Web site.
With real-time information, Village residents
can understand and respond to the
ecological consequences of their daily
energy consumption and make informed
and educated decisions.
“There were energy
reductions in every single
hall,” says Emily Thomas
(’09), a student representative
to the Institute
for Stewardship of
the Natural World and
co-founder of the JMU
Clean Energy Coalition.
“Village Green Wars
and Dashboard are great
ways to involve and educate
students about environmental
responsibility,’”
says Maggie Evans, JMU
director of residence life.
The competition was
a collaborative effort
among the JMU Office
of Residence Life, the
Institute for Stewardship
of the Natural World, the
Clean Energy Coalition
and the facilities management
division. M
DASHBOARD DATA
Students living in The
Village residence halls
competed against each
other to reduce energy
use during Village Green
Wars. Thanks to Building
Dashboard, students could
make informed decisions
on water and electrical
use by logging on to the
Web-based application
and viewing energy use
information in real-time.
THOMAS: It is important to teach people
how they are responsible because many
don’t realize the effects of what they do.
HARTMAN: We have to model the behaviors
we desire. I set a standard not so much
by what I say in the classroom but by what I
do daily. And my students continually challenge
me. I’m thinking, “Oh no, what’s the
setting on my washing machine?” when
Emily talks about washing her clothes with
cold water only. My hardest job is to reach
those who aren’t listening, many of whom
are frustrated by associated fads and politics.
One area of common ground I’ve found
is that human health and the environment
are intertwined. We have an opportunity for
environmental stewardship to be a uniting
endeavor, and it is exciting to see people
together who ordinarily wouldn’t be in the
same club or major. The Interfaith Coalition
sponsored a panel on faith views on the
environment, and we had diverse people
talking and sharing a very common view
on the environment and divergent views on
other topics. When it comes to the environment,
we’re all sharing the same space. We
need to consider environmental stewardship
as us working together thoughtfully, as
a team. And we need to bring our different
perspectives to challenge each other and
develop innovative solutions.
THOMAS: I agree. As an ISAT major, I view
energy choices in a different light than my
friends in the Earth Club who have an anthropology
background. I talk about the science
side, and they talk about how it affects
people. One of the biggest debates is always
nuclear power. It’s not necessarily polluting,
but it creates toxic waste that we don’t know
how to handle. There’s mining for uranium,
very similar to coal mining, which is not what
Earth Club stands for — but maybe it’s also an
intermediate solution. We had people come
up from where uranium is being mined and
say, “This environmental destruction is not
permissible for us. We need your help against
uranium mining and nuclear power.” But on
the flip side, we don’t have that much else
that can give us that base load power right
now. And then some members of the Earth
Club say, “It is maybe better than coal; maybe
we should support nuclear power.” I think it’s
valuable to see a topic from so many different
angles; you kind of push each other to open
your eyes that much more.
BOLGIANO: It’s widely reported that many
young people lack a connection with the nat-
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SUMMER 2009
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