It's tiny! It's cheap! It's a disaster.
WHAT'S THE WORST piece of junk to be found in a Dartmouth dorm room? That's easy. About 90 percent of the time, a tiny refrigerator is going to be the shoddiest, most wasteful object in the room. Some rooms even have two of them. I speak as one who has seen with hiown eyes. With the consent of the 111 students in the Mid Mass dorm, I did a careful count. What I found was this: There are 44 rooms in Mid Mass. At the moment of my survey, four of them had no refrigerator. But the other 40 more than made up. They housed a total of 46 tiny fridges. The big majority (four-fifths) were the standard cheapo cube, with 1,7-cubic-foot capacity. The other fifth were larger and slightly better-built models, with a capacity of between 2.5 and 4 cubic feet.
None of the tinies, in or out of Mid Mass, carries the Energy Star that the EPA awards to about a hundred of the more efficient models of big refrigerators. All of the tinies are big insults to the environment.
These are strong words. Do I perhaps exaggerate? I do not. Let me give you two kinds of evidence. First, let's compare the energy use of a typical shoddy cube with that of a well-made big refrigerator.
If it's a Sanyo or a Sears Kenmore, the shoddy cube uses about 300 kilowatt hours a year to cool its 1.7 cubic feet of space. If it's a Magic Chef or Avanti, it uses about 260. Call the average 280. Then figure out how many kilowatt hours per cubic foot for this average little junker. If my simple math is correct, it works out to 167 kilowatt hours per cubic foot.
Now look at a big Maytag, holder of the Energy Star, with a capacity of 2 2 cubic feet. It uses about 480 kilowatt hours a year—and that works out to 22 kilowatt hours per cubic foot per year. In other words, it's seven times as efficient as Little Shoddy. Part of that, of course, is economy of scale, but most of the difference arises from better construction methods.
Second piece of evidence: Several years ago an Environmental Studies 50 class did a study entitled "Student Electricity Use in Dormitories." They found that printers accounted for one percent of student-in-dorm electrical use. VCRs took 1.7 percent, computers 18 percent. Shoddy cubes led all the rest. They took 27 percent.
Sometimes well-meaning administrators get the idea that a dormitory could have three or four big refrigerators instead of 40 or 50 little ones. You could put them in common rooms.
That would save power, all right. It would also lead to food theft. You desperately need a glass of orange juice and you have none, but there are seven cartons belonging to other people in the big Maytag in the common room. How could you possibly not raid just a little of it?
I would back either of two quite different solutions. The first would be to have the College put an energy-efficient minifridge in every dorm room. The College at present doesn't want to do that, pointing out that it's in the education business, not the appliance business. To which I say it can always get in the appliance business, as it already is in the logging business (Second College Grant), water business (half owner of Hanover Water Works), hotel business, landlord business, and so on.
But recognizing that the College's reluctance is perfectly legitimate, if a little short-sighted, I have a second proposal. What if environmentally inclined alums donated a well-made mini to the room where they most liked living. Each one could have a little donor plaque and everything. Wouldn't cost a whole lot, either. I'm told that small companies like Danby and U-Line provide moderately well-built tinies for about $250.
One last note. I have found it a discouraging business, looking into the world of tinies. Other than a very brief report back in 1991, Consumer Reports completely ignores them. So does the Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings, published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Society. The EPA doesn't pay much attention to tinies, either.
As for appliance dealers, they pretty much ignore everything exphone. So a bright senior, CaseyNoga '00, called many dealers and visited a few, to help me out. He quickly discovered that most of the salespeople know little and care ergy Star program. Sears is the honorable exception (it even sells some Energy Star biggies), while Wal-Mart carries off the award for Most Ignorant Salesperson.
What are colleges for? Among other things, to dispel ignorance. Wouldn't it be nice if Dartmouth not only got its own dorms a bit more efficient, but proved a beacon for all the other colleges in New England? And why stop there? Maybe we could illuminate a path for residential colleges all over the country. Maybe we could even wake up Consumer Reports. And, of course, we could simultaneously be saving the College a couple of hundred thousand kilowatt hours a year.
