Prince Lucien Campbell Hall is the target of ASUO Outreach Committee efforts to decrease energy use on campus. During Energy Week, which ran Feb. 14-18, the committee distributed energy-saving light bulbs and motion-sensing power strips to
graduate teaching fellow and faculty offices in the building.
“PLC’s really energy inefficient,” ASUO Outreach Director Taylour Johnson said. “If you’ve ever been up there in the middle of the day, it gets really hot and uncomfortable.”
The PLC project was a long time in the making. ASUO Outreach
Committee intern Ben Hart said that a few years ago, student government and the facilities department acquired numerous energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs and motion-sensing power strips to distribute in PLC.
Economics GTF Mike Visser said he received a motion-sensing power strip from the first equipment distribution a year or two ago. He has two computer monitors, speakers, a printer, and some personal digital
assistants plugged into it.
“I don’t pay the bills, so I don’t care about the energy in that sense, but it didn’t present any problems,” Visser said.
However, relatively few people benefited from the original effort.
“With budget and time constraints, (past ASUO members) weren’t able to finish it up,” Hart said. “We really put in a lot of time and energy to finish it all up.”
“There was a closet filled with equipment in PLC,” Johnson said. “We just distributed it,”
Hart said of about 300 rooms in PLC, he and his colleagues made contact with the occupants of at least 250 rooms. One-hundred and fifty PLC occupants who wanted supplies received them. A hundred declined the offer because they felt they didn’t need surge protectors for their laptops, Hart said.
“It wasn’t like ‘No, we don’t want it,’” Hart said. “It was more like, ‘No, we don’t need it.’”
The motion-detecting power strips differ from standard surge protectors in that they have motion detectors that turn the equipment off when no one is in the room. This works well for equipment such as printers, fans, and radios, Johnson said, but for computers, there are also two outlets on the power strip that are not controlled by the motion detector, ensuring that computer processes such as downloading will not be interrupted even when the room is unoccupied.
Hart said the new equipment could potentially save the University $10,000 in energy costs per year.
While the equipment has been distributed, the project still has yet to fully take effect, as equipment recipients take time to use their new devices.
“I haven’t taken it out of the box yet,” economics GTF Bill Hall said. He said he will probably try to set up his power strip later this week.
“I have mine and I haven’t had the time to set it up yet. I’m not a big energy user,” English professor Liz Bohls said, explaining that while some people have desk lamps and fans in their offices, she only has a computer.
With Energy Week finished, the ASUO Outreach Committee is now working to form an Energy Action Team made up of a group of faculty and students to further improve energy conservation on campus. Possible projects include adding energy-
saving equipment to other campus buildings and raising awareness of energy issues among students. Hart said the group is also planning a large-scale Earth Day celebration for the spring, during which surplus motion-sensing power strips may be distributed to students.
To get involved in the new energy awareness group, call Taylour
Johnson at 346-0715.

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