After four weeks of a closely watched competition, three residential halls have been named the winners of the 2010 Sustain-a-Bowl.
With more than 4,000 students competing in each of Auburn's 30 residence halls, having three winners share the fame is still a large accomplishment for each building.
In the Quad, the winner was Lupton Hall. Knapp Hall was the champion on the Hill.
For the Village, the newest residence halls added into the contest, Oak Hall came out on top.
"We usually have only one winner, but the comparisons (against the Village) are so different," said Matt Williams, program manager for the Office of Sustainability. Instead of looking back at the previous electricity and water usage for the Village, the Office of Sustainability determined their results using per-person rates, causing difficulty when trying to determine actual statistics on their savings.
"All of the Hill and Quad buildings saved electricity," Williams said. "The smallest was 7 percent reduced and the largest was 34 percent reduced."
Overall, these reductions saved Auburn more than $8,000 from reducing electricity in these two areas alone, which is close to double what these buildings achieved last year.
The water reductions were not as positive of results with three of the 21 buildings on the Hill and in the Quad showing increases in use. Between the 19 buildings who did decrease use, the smallest reduction was five percent and the largest reduction was 43 percent.
"That's a total of 603,000 gallons of water saved from (operating with) business as usual," Williams said. "This equaled $4,010 in savings."
Although reducing waste, water and electricity use was the main focus for the Sustain-a-Bowl, many residents participated in weekly events earning points toward winning, including Valentine's Day card decorating and a trivia night featuring Anthony Danaar from the Antishow Show on Tiger FM.
Kirn Cramer, material engineering graduate student and residential advisor for Oak Hall, enjoyed being involved with each event.
"My favorite part was the banner (event)," Cramer said. "Our hall didn't work on just one... and I liked to see what the sororities did."
Cramer was impressed in the effort each of the six sororities put forth and said the work they did wasn't unnoticed, but somewhat surprising.
"There were a few girls who worked on each event," Cramer said. "But each (sorority) knew the benefit."
The winners celebrated together with a dinner hosted by the Housing and Residence Life in the Gorrie Center Lobby Tuesday.
"All of the residents in the three buildings received an invitation by e-mail," said Becky Bell, assistant director of housing and residence life. "It's free. So hopefully we'll have many people there."
The dinner, provided by Tiger Dining, allowed all of the residents to celebrate together while the Office of Sustainability announced the final statistics, equaling a total of $12,374 in combined savings for the Hill and the Quad for the month of February. This surpassed last year's savings by more than $4,000.
Bell said she was excited when she heard about the results.
"The residents all worked very hard," Bell said.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
