With unity in the dorm and a constant theme of sustainability, the Apartment Residence Hall has won the POWER Challenge.
    
Short for Power Of Water, Energy and Recycling, the POWER Challenge was a campus-wide competition between the dorms to see which one could conserve and sustain the most energy. The competition is held every year.
    
The competition is co-sponsored by the United Resident Hall Council and the Office of Sustainability. Through October, points are awarded to dorms weekly based on how much electricity and water is saved, how much recycling a dorm has done and any programs the resident assistants might do. Once all the points have been tallied up, the dorm with the most points wins.
    
To determine how many points are awarded, the Office of Sustainability monitors the dorms’ electric and water meters, weighs how much recyclables have been turned in and finds out what sort of programs the dorms have orchestrated.
   
 The Office of Sustainability does take into account the differences in dorms when taking scores. They do not include the electricity and water used by the Morrill Dining Hall as part of Morrill Hall’s overall score. Likewise, to balance out things like the amount of students and the different amenities dorms have that others might not, the program score is used to offset any unfair scoring.
   
 The RAs of the Apartment Residence Hall conducted many different programs to encourage and educate the residents about conservation and sustainability.
   
 Kiersten Backs, an RA and junior in kinesiology from the Apartment Residence Hall, did a ghost story theme as one of her programs.
    
“We tried to shut everything we could off,” Backs said. “… And we sat around and told ghost stories with our flashlights.”
    
Backs and the other Apartment Residence Hall RAs also decorated bulletin boards and doors with facts about recycling and the environment. Tables were set up where students could pledge to take quicker showers.
    
The dorm’s residence association, ARTA, also got in on the act, conducting a black-out dance where all the lights in the ARH’s study room were shut off, and the walls were painted with glow-in-the-dark paint. Backs said the black-out dance was the highlight of the dorm’s activities.
    
Backs attributed ARH’s victory to the unity of the dorm and the fact that ARH has had a sustainability theme since the beginning of the school year.
    
“Our residents are always the people that come out and say, ‘Yeah! Let’s do that idea!’” Backs said. “Our whole theme this year for the building has been sustainability. We’re taking this sustainability to a whole new level. We’re still promoting it even though the program is over.”
    
As part of the ARH’s continued push for sustainability, some of the students are growing a garden outside the dorm. Other students have started keeping compost buckets in their rooms, which will later be used outside for the garden. The dorm is also trying to get more recycling bins to put throughout the building.
    
As part of their prize, all of the residents of ARH received the “MO Green” POWER Challenge trophy and catering from Moe’s Southwest Grill.
    
Courtney Washburn, the outreach coordinator for the Office of Sustainability, said she and the office were very pleased with this year’s results.
   
 “I think this is the most impressive year we’ve seen in floor and hall programs,” Washburn said.
    
But the POWER Challenge isn’t just a fun time for students. The program ends up saving the university a lot of resources and money.
    
After compounding and studying the information, the Office of Sustainability concluded that the water saved could have flooded the field at Neyland Stadium up to six inches. An additional 16,000 pounds of recycling were collected.
    
Due to the light bulb exchange program, where students could exchange their incandescent bulbs for fluorescent bulbs, over 77,000 kWh of electricity were saved. The Office of Sustainability said the amount is comparable to the carbon emissions of 1,400 propane cylinders used for barbecue grills.
    
The total costs avoided during the POWER Challenge amounted to $36,287.