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Old Gold&Black WAKE FOREST’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER SINCE 1916
VOL. 103, NO. 11
T H U R S DAY, A P R I L 5 , 2 018 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
wfuogb.com
Provost Kersh’s address focuses on faculty achievements In his annual address, Rogan Kersh discussed the tradition of excellence at Wake Forest BY HEATHER HARTEL Online Managing Editor harthf15@wfu.edu
Lizzie Snyder and Olivia Field/Old Gold & Black
Project Night Light is a new initative launched by the Office of Sustainability and Department of Physics. It hopes to make the university energy efficient and to reduce light pollution to keep stars visible at night.
Stars can’t shine in lightness Project Night Light aims to limit light polution and bring stars back to Wake Forest’s campus BY RAFAEL LIMA Staff Writer limara17@wfu.edu The Reynolda Campus has many reasons that make a walk at night a wonderful experience. It is filled with magnificent magnolias, flowers spread around open grass areas and a Georgian architecture which bridges the buildings across time. Yet, one major element is now missing: stars. Stars vanishing from night skies is a recurring event often thought of as a price that comes alongside development and ever-expanding civilizations. With recent high rates of light pollution, it has also become a problem at Wake Forest. In an effort to solve this problem while lowering energy costs on campus, the Of-
fice of Sustainability, in partnership with the Department of Physics, launched Project Night Light. “The idea is using measurements of outdoor lighting on campus to limit light pollution,” said Nathan Peifer, program coordinator for the Office of Sustainability. “We [also] hope that [those] measurements can guide our campus broadly in providing enough illumination for student safety but also reducing the amount of energy that we are using.” On June 5, 2017, after President Trump declared that the U.S. would not pursue the carbon-reduction pledges of the Paris Climate Accord anymore, a U.S. coalition of private businesses, cities, colleges and states signed the “We Are Still In” commitment to cut carbon pollution and deliver on the promises of the agreement by themselves. According to the International DarkSky Association (IDA), about 35 percent of outdoor lighting in the U.S. is wasted towards the sky due to lack of shielding measures and poor placing and aiming.
This wasted energy alone is responsible for the release of around 21 million tons of carbon dioxide per year in the U.S. alone. Wake Forest, as a member of the “We Are Still In” movement, designed project Night Light as the latest in a series of structural changes including building renewals and retrofits towards a more sustainable and energy-efficient campus. “If you have lights that only project down, then you [can] save half of your light, at least, because you don’t need the light to go up,” said Professor Jed Macosko, who teaches the class physics and chemistry of the environment. “It doesn’t help anybody to be safe.” Project Night Light is still in the dataanalysis stage, but possible solutions involve the use of reflectors that limit the amount of light projected towards the sky, improvements on the focus of the spotlights at Wait Chapel and a redesign of the acorn-shaped lamp posts to enhance illumination efficiency.
See Stars, Page 6
On the evening of Monday, April 2, Pugh Auditorium was filled almost to capacity with anticipatory chatter. The excited noise, however, was not from students talking with their peers; instead the room was filled with professors, faculty and staff all catching up and sharing news among various departments. The occasion was Provost Rogan Kersh’s Annual Address, where he updates the faculty and staff about the accomplishments of the past year while also providing guidance for the future. Stewart Carter, professor in the department of music and the interim president of the faculty senate, offered the opening remarks. He introduced Kersh, sharing Kersh’s various accomplishments as a Wake Forest student, his later publications, various awards at other universities and briefly profiling his tenure thus far at Wake Forest. Following the introduction, Provost Kersh began his address with a question, asking: “When did Wake Forest go from a small, liberal arts school to a major, recognized university?” The proceeding answer came with a brief lesson in history, as Kersh explained that in the 1980s the first major fundraising campaign had a goal of raising $17.5 million. Later, during the tenure of President Emeritus Thomas Hearn, the Heritage and Promise Campaign set out to raise $150 million, and achieved its goal. Kersh’s address, similarly titled “Promise and Heritage,” was centered around these two ideas: the promise inherently embedded in the faculty and their accomplishments, combined with the heritage of excellence and celebration at Wake Forest. Focused solely on the academic enterprise, specifically the faculty, Kersh began his address by highlighting specific achievements.
See Provost, Page 4