Earth Hour @ BITS-Pilani

20:28hours and I receive a message from my friend (Dicky Motiwala) “Earth hour in wing!yay.!”. I knew it was the Earth Hour, but was too lazy to take action. However since I was at the FD 2 (faculty division 2) with two friends of mine and we were completely vella, we pushed ourselves into switching off all the lights in FD 2(corridor, faculty rooms, bathrooms etc.), auditorium and the FD 3.

By then, most hostels were blacked out. Apparently BITSians responded brilliantly to earth hour this year compared to the last. They took to streets and roads and assembled at Patel chowk to enjoy the evening. I was at that very place exactly a week back discussing Earth hour with three other friends. We planned to organise a jamming session, a candle light dinner at C’not, get faculty to endorse the movement etc… APOGEE was too hectic to do any of it. It now seems too pointless to have done all that. By the way, this is the mail we sent to the earth hour organisation

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Raghav Mimani <raghavkmimani@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 7:12 PM
Subject: Earth Hour at BITS Pilani, India: The Dark Knights
To: myearthhour@earthhour.org

Hi,

I am a student at BITS Pilani , India. Pilani is a very secluded region (intellectually high and it was aimed to be a place completely different from the world outside)  with the nearest big city in New Delhi which is 200 kilometers away. One of its major feature is our college BITS Pilani which is reputed for its academic excellence and boasts of a massive college campus residing 4,000 plus students and around 1000 faculty members amongst other working staffs and families. Our daily consumption of food runs into tonnes and electricity into megawatts.

We celebrated Earth Hour last year as well. This year we have decided to take it miles ahead.

We, a group of 4 friends calling themselves ‘The Dark Knights’ for this very motive, met up and and formulated a plan with host of activities to celebrate and express our solidarity in alignment with the Earth Hour. Some of the salient points which we have in mind for the night and about which we have already started working on it a long time ago are:

• Complete Switch Off of BITS Pilani’s electricity:
  This includes switching off lights in the Institute arena as well as the residential student hostels and faculty & staff quarters. For Institute area, we will be getting permissions from the Deans and the Vice Chancellor of the institute. Since its night time and most of the activities happen during the day only, it will be feasible to get it done. For Student Hostels, we have 3-4 volunteers which will be ensuring the success of the campaign in the 12 Hostels having around 300 students on an average. For the Faculty and other Staff houses, we plan to have their sons and daughter’s as volunteers amongst some of the faculty member’s themselves who will be instrumental in the success of the campaign.
• Candle Lights:
  Significantly at three places. Firstly, at C’not Place, the major market area and hang out zone of our college having as many as 8 different restaurants and cafeterias, secondly at Student’s Activity Center (SAC), having our college’s indoor sporting facilities and a big canteen predominantly for snacks and beverages, and thirdly at All Night Canteen, which as the name suggests is one of our most visited places often being the last resort to quench our hunger in the middle of the night. What we plan to do here is switch off the lights and let the students and other people experience a different feeling.
• Jamming and Talk Sessions:
  One of the main areas where students of BITS Pilani meet up to discuss and talk is under the statue’s of two of the foremost leaders of the Indian Independence: Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. We have thought of lighting up these two places with candles and having music jamming sessions (note: we will be having jam sessions and won’t be playing songs in music systems) and other talks at them. The talks will be focussed on environmental issues amongst groups of say 25-30 people and will be moderated by a few of volunteers.
• Astronomy – Star gazing session:
  Our college has a big astronomical telescope and to utilize it to the optimum we also have an astronomy club. Moreover, the location of the telescope overlooks a vast expanse of the roof of one of the faculty divisions (Institute Classroom and Labs arena). We have thought of having a session specially focussed for that hour where in people can come over and do one of the much celebrated activities of all time – Star gazing
• Publicity Campaign – No papers used!:
  We have already started with our publicity campaign. We are having a unique campaign in which we won’t be using any form paper for publicity in the forms of posters or pamphlets. Since it is for the environment why harm it in any sense? Hence we are going by the viral marketing drive. In which, we are focusing on these aspects:
  • Word of Mouth Publicity – Forming a Fraternity: We were initially only 4 when we started but now we, “The Dark Knights” are a team of 150+ people. Our basic methodology is spreading awareness and we believe nothing spreads better than one telling many and then those ‘many’ telling many more. Hence we talk to our friends and tell them about it and they in turn actively participate and continue taking the baton ahead with telling their friends and they continue the process. By the time the earth hour arrives the whole of campus will be associated with the term “Dark Knights”.
  • Google Talk: All of us, the Dark Knights have our status messages on g-talk, the monopoly messenger here, as something related to Earth Hour. People who aren’t involved initially get curious and ask us and become dark knights themselves, spreading the message even more.
  • Faculty Involvement: Every single professor and his/her family is being approached to be a part of this campaign, and many already are. Again, we don’t go giving them proposals on paper, instead talk to them and let them be a part, at most having slides for backing up.
  • Videos: We are right now celebrating our Technical Festival, APOGEE, in which people from various colleges across India have come over to participate. In the cultural night of it, we are planning to have a video of ours showcased. Moreover, we will be multi-casting the video over our college LAN network to create a buzz.
  • Hooters and Drums: On the night, at the starting time of the earth hour, we will be sounding hooters and playing Drums to declare the announcement of Earth Hour.
  • Viral – The Dark Knights: In addition to all these, we will be having volunteers (rather the Dark Knights) on the night to mobilize people who haven’t still woke up to the new dawn  to be a part of the campaign.
• Media participation: We will also be tying up with Media publications to ensure the right messages be conveyed to the youth in other colleges who haven’t yet initiated with their drives about earth hour or are unaware about it completely. Since BITS Pilani features at a very high position in colleges nationally and internationally, a social drive here is heard in a much larger magnitude elsewhere and this is what we are trying to harness.

These are just few of the major points which we have thought about, there are many more like Street Plays, Revised Mess – Dinner timings, Resurrection of battered old lanterns which are their on campus, food supply in the talk sessions, etc.  The talks amongst people have already started. Over dinner tables, over playgrounds, on the road, in the laboratories, everywhere. Each one of us is either involved or will be involved in the near future. And to quote, “In this campaign there is nobody in the organizing team and everybody in the organizing team”. We are very certain of pulling off a great showcase of our expression of concern towards the mother earth.

All that said and done, we will be needing your support and help in whatever way possible which can be talked over at length. Please do drop in a mail as to how can we associate ourselves with you. We will be more than happy!

Regards..

Raghav Mimani

for “The Dark Knights”,

Student

Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani.

India.

Contact: +91 99835 26789

Address: 225, Shankar Bhawan,

BITS Pilani

Lolz….. It was great fun though. The Earth Hour initiative on-campus was fairly successful. It would have been better if the Gen-Sec, who is passionately working towards the ‘Green University’ status would have got the management/institute to co-operate. There were spoilsports in the process which included the warden of Krishna Bhawan, who drove away the enthued first yearites who requested him to turn off a few lights. A few debates on whether this initiative was pointless were inevitable but nevertheless the show was satisfactory.