No, you turn off the lights

Every time I leave my room, I see the little green sticker that PSU Housing placed on my light switch. It says, “Lights off before leaving—Campus Sustainability Office.” This sticker never ceases to annoy me, because it’s one of the most hypocritical things at Portland State.



Take a walk around campus on any given night and you’ll see what I mean. Our campus stays lit up like a Christmas tree 24/7.

We keep on most of the lights in the library and tons of lights in Smith, Neuberger and Cramer. Lincoln’s lobby is usually lit, and the science buildings and the Extended Studies building all have lights on.

The Academic and Student Rec Center and Urban Center do as well, as do less-central buildings like Hoffmann Hall, the Engineering Building and the administrative buildings.



The only 24-hour facilities on campus that aren’t residence halls are the campus security office in Shattuck Hall, ResLife in Montgomery Court Residence Hall and the Broadway building’s computer lab, so I’d love to know why PSU wastes hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars every night by keeping at least half the lights on in every building on campus.

Why does a school that lauds itself on sustainability and shiny new LEED-certified buildings need to be lit up at all hours of the night?

It’s certainly not for security reasons, because there’s little of value in buildings like Neuberger or Cramer, and unless there are groups of people in the depths of these locked buildings, no need to keep it lit for late workers.

This campus is dead after about 10 p.m. every night. Judging from the state of most classrooms, the janitorial staff isn’t active nightly. This is very much not a 24-hour campus.

Is it for display, then? The buildings do look awfully nice and pristine at night, burning away all that expensive electricity. Does PSU leave its lights on so that it makes a nice impression for the insomniacs and homeless people? Speaking as an insomniac, I can guess that these are the only two types of people out at night. Or is it just laziness? That seems like the most probable answer to me.

And I want to impress again how ridiculous it is to ask student residents to turn off their lights.

Most of the housing on campus uses inefficient incandescent bulbs, yes. But they’re such a low wattage that you need lamps if you want to be able to actually see anything in your room at night. It’s one bulb per living area, and often less than that (looking at you, Broadway).

Compare that to the multiple fluorescent bulbs used in the other buildings on campus. The power usage from housing has to be a fraction of the electricity used on campus. Does leaving a light on between classes have a big impact on the system as a whole? Of course not.

I don’t resent turning off lights, and it’s a habit I’ve always had because wasting electricity is bad, but why focus on the residents’ power usage? There are way bigger wastes happening every day and every night. I don’t believe that PSU actually cares about sustainability, but even if it’s simply a marketing strategy, wouldn’t it be more convincing to at least put up a stronger pretense?

Think of the money that could be saved by doing it. An old Vanguard article reported that PSU’s monthly power bill was $136,000. The same article talked about how a conservation campaign on campus saved the university more than $200,000. [“The price of saving energy,” July 19, 2006.] That campaign was focused on turning off lights and computers. It’s clearly an easy way to save. So why not do it?

PSU needs to be more responsible about turning off the lights if it’s going to ask students to do so. It’s a terrible waste of money and resources to keep the campus lit up at night. It’s time to end this pointless, wasteful practice.