You may think your room is dirty, but is it messy enough to be the named the filthiest room in the nation?
Starting this week, college students around the country will be able to enter the Sierra Club’s “2 Dirty 4 College” photo contest. The Sierra Club will name one winner and award him or her a green cleaning service.
The photos can be of both on- and off-campus rooms and must be submitted by Dec. 6 to the Sierra Club web site.
According to David Graham-Caso, Sierra Club’s associate press secretary, the contest aims to educate students about where their power comes from and how to move campuses to cleaner energy sources. The competition’s message focuses on the elimination of coal as a power source and its web site promotes the slogan “where the dirtiest room you can find is still cleaner than coal”.
“I think my room ranks up there in terms of dirtiness,” said College junior Paul Rivenburgh, who plans to enter the contest. “But I have seen some pretty ridiculous rooms around campus who are in need of this cleaning service.”
The “2 Dirty 4 College” contest is a part of the Sierra Club Campuses Beyond Coal Campaign. The advertising campaign includes videos and highlights the detrimental effects of coal.
Coal provides about 50 percent of our power and more than 30 percent of global warming pollution, according to the Sierra Club’s web site.
The video series online plays off of stereotypically “dirty” college behavior and tries to show that coal is still “too dirty, even for college,” said Graham-Caso.
“I think this sort of outreach campaign is a great way to educate students on little-known facts about their power sources,” said Nathaniel Meyer, the Green Corps organizer who also works on the Beyond Coal Campaign at Pennsylvania State University.
“We are really pushing this on campuses where students may not be aware of their university’s reliance on environmentally detrimental power sources,” he added.
Along with promoting the campaign, Meyer is organizing Penn State students to pressure their college administrators to close the campus coal-fired steam plant.
Students can upload room images on the web site tiny.cc/pKqGZ and comment and vote on the other dirty-room photo contest competitors.
The top five most-voted photos will be reviewed by the Sierra Student Coalition Executive Committee and a grand prize winner will be selected.
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