Letter to Editor

To the editor of Washington Square News, Adam Playford, and the WSN staff,

A reflection on my recent experience with the environmental advocacy initiative, BLACKOUT NYU, an effort to turn off or dim lights in classrooms and offices around NYU on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22:

In preparing re-used fliers (old paper bags, magazines, and elderly WSN's) to post around campus, I wondered quietly whether my classmates in Gallatin's "Political Journalism" and I were wasting our time. Students in class need to see the board, their notes, and their books; faculty in offices must be able to work. Maybe on some idyllic little college campus where every room has windows BLACKOUT might have stood a chance, but in the notoriously window-less warrens of Stern, Silver, and Steinhardt?
I therefore want to commend NYU students and faculty for their willingness to at least try turning out their lights. Some where more amenable than others, but on the whole people seemed not opposed to the idea. The sentiment I faced most often while going through classrooms with the "Blackout Squad" was not antagonism, but confusion. I can just imagine the comments after we left a room: "Who were those people?/What did they want?/Why is it darker in here? What is the point?" Because although they turned off some of their lights and could still function, or else were able to open the blinds and use natural light, many probably felt the same way I did: how much is this actually helping? A few less pounds of carbon from NYU on Earth Day.
Whoo-pee-doo.
This nagging doubt hovered beneath my smiling determination to flip as many light switches as possible.

Yet then again, what is the alternative? One of the few un-supportive professors put it quite well when he said, "I'm sorry, but I think my students' eyes are more important than..." And he stopped. More important than what? Preventing flooding, food shortages, droughts, and disease around the globe? I hate to sound apocalyptic, but this is hardly journalistic hyperbole. This is what lies at the end of our current path of insatiable petroleum consumption.

At the end of a day talking to people about the project and patrolling classrooms, BLACKOUT NYU taught me not to doubt people. We know what could happen if we don't change the way we use energy. In the face of an entire system of over-consumption the nagging doubt about our own ability to change our course starts with individual empowerment. Reminding people to exert the control that they have, (over their own light switches), flips another switch: the attitude that we can do something about this. Once the empowerment switch has been turned on, the doubt that currently tells us we can't change the patterns of American energy consumption will lose its juice. We can do this. Just flip the switch.

[Thanks to the staff of WSN for publicizing Earth Day events and environmental issues, for your outstanding work in general. And for receiving this letter. Best, Annelle Sheline, Gallatin '08]