I walk to ECO meetings alone, because most people in my dorm are in for the night by 9:30 - working or fooling around - and definitely have no desire to walk uphill in the cold. I got lost finding the first meeting because I didn't know that the main floor in Eaton is actually the second floor. My fingers were numb, I was late, and I didn't recognize anyone. It was frightening to be outside of the freshman world, but I stayed through the meeting and walked out with a handful of posters on "Do it in the Dark," the club's residence hall energy initiative.
In high school, clubs and sports were just another part of life, but here, it was a different story. For my first month at college, I was just a typical freshman who knew the inside story of nothing, and although I could tell you that DU was Delta Upsilon, I had no idea what ALAS stood for. Joining a club enabled me to slowly become a part the Tufts community and maybe even have an effect on it. When I started taping up the posters and handing out glow-in-the-dark condoms, I distanced myself, for the first time, from the inaction of being just a student at Tufts.
In the beginning, it was unfamiliar having nothing more than schoolwork and laundry on my to-do list. In fact, I felt a little guilty for not being involved in something extra. But when it came time to put up posters, spread the word to my dorm and start reminding people to turn off their lights, I was scared and self-conscious. Tilton is an all-freshman dorm, and the easiest things to talk about are experiences that are unique to being new: the block schedule, intimidating upper-level classes, losing ID cards and just how little sleep a person can get and still function.
So the idea of disassociating myself from that culture - and doing it for something that could label me as the "crazy earth girl" - wasn't that attractive. Besides, even my best friends had only known me a few weeks, and who knows? Maybe they were afraid of the dark.
I brought those bright yellow, purple and orange signs back to my desk and stared at them, thinking. To be true to who I was I had to put them up. I think that the best way to change anything that seems big and overwhelming, like global warming, is to start small, with the little things, to ensure that your own personal life matches your beliefs. Just remembering to turn off the fan while you're in class will reinforce a conservationist attitude, which is important for people to have in every field.
Environmentalism has always been a central issue in my life, and this energy initiative naturally captivated my attention and inspired me to take action. I made the decision to be committed to the "Do it in the Dark" campaign because of my own personal motivation, but the greatest surprise was the response from other people in Tilton. Second-floor students turned off their hall lights at midnight on the Oct. 14, the first day of DIITD, and the stairway lights were shut off (illegally), too by some mysterious light-banishing freshman.
On my own floor, people started turning off bathroom lights and the common room lights during the day. Sure, the condoms were probably a good reminder, but the freshman activism got me thinking that maybe I wasn't alone in wanting to do more for Tufts than write English papers and do problem sets.
Or perhaps it's freshman solidarity that motivated Tilton to go dark, to show what we can accomplish, to bond together even if it means bumping into each other. Maybe it's because the remaining sunlight is still enough to compensate for less electric lighting. Maybe downhill kids are just naturally activist, or maybe word-of-mouth has raised awareness.
I'm not really sure what inspired such enthusiasm for "Do it in the Dark," but I hope all the residence halls can sustain what habits they've begun during the campaign and build on them to save more energy. Because turning off a light, a fan, a computer, a TV or a radio is the first step towards thinking about the habitual actions that have perpetrated our dependence on fossil fuels, and provides an easy way to control such habits on a daily basis.
So if you flip the switch to participate for the first time at Tufts, to follow through on personal beliefs or to make full use of that glow-in-the-dark condom, just make sure you do it, and don't quit - even on Nov. 14.
Rebecca Gallagher is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
