Jamie Salinas, Elizabeth Welker, Diana Smith and Sarah Welker create a sidewalk chalk drawing at Avista's Power Down, Add Up contest.
NIC’s resident staff put on an energy awareness event Sept. 30 to promote Avistas Power Down, Add Up contest, which included an outdoor grill with free burgers and hotdogs, yard games, sidewalk chalk drawing, a raffle, and live music by former NIC student and recently retired leader of the campus church group ‘Thirst’ Ryan Hadden.
This contest is between the five colleges Avista Utilities supplies with power; Gonzaga, University of Idaho, Washington State University, Whitworth University and North Idaho College. This is the first year NIC and Whitworth have been invited to participate. Gonzaga won last year.
The contest to see which school and which living group can save the most power is for students living in on-campus dorms or Greek housing. The top three living groups receive prizes and the top over-all university wins a traveling trophy and bragging rights for the next year. The contest is set up so that bigger colleges won’t have an advantage just because of size. However, the contest is based on the honor system so students will log into the website daily or weekly and report the things they are doing to conserve energy.
Students will perform small, energy saving steps such as turning off lights when leaving a room, turning off unused electronics, unplugging chargers, taking shorter showers or just not using as much hot water. According to Avista, last year Gonzaga and WSU students saved enough energy to power 419 homes, or light 591 homes for one day.
“We can’t wait to see how much energy the collective efforts of these students can save,” said Chris Drake, lead energy efficiency program manager for Avista. “We hope to help students build good energy saving habits before they’re out on their own paying an energy bill.”
To some, it would seem as though Avista it trying to encourage people to stop using their product. In an email from Debbie Simock of Avista’s media department, some reasons are given.
“We know energy efficiency is the lowest cost, best new source of energy and we would rather encourage people to use less energy than have to build expensive wind farms or power plants,” Simock said. Many students attended and enjoyed the free food and drink and gathered in support of the contest.
“The whole thing is to be conscious about using energy,” said Paula Czirr, the head live-in adviser of the NIC residence hall. It’s possible that now, with the new colleges included in the contest, some stronger rivalry and larger participation will ensue. Andrew Demarest, 19, computer animation, Boise, remained confident that NIC will take first place.
