With debates arising over increased tuition, a group of students have presented a potential solution to these higher costs.

Last year, Penn State replaced older, inefficient light bulbs in exit signs in buildings across campus with newer, more energy efficient Light Emitting Diodes. This move cost the university $80,000. However, Penn State recovered this cost in the energy it saved in the first year these LEDs were implemented.

This and other such small changes, as outlined in the preliminary presentation of the Sackett Report, by the newly forming Penn State Green Design Team, have the potential to save Penn State millions of dollars. These changes also will allow the university to decrease its overall ecological impact on the surrounding environment and community. The student members of the Green Design Team presented the Sackett Report yesterday afternoon in Carnegie Cinema to an audience of about 60 people. The group bases its efforts on bringing awareness of the impact of human behaviors on the environment.

"These problems are as much problems of the mind as of the eye," said Chris Russill, head of the Environmental Stewardship Initiative, regarding ecological issues at the university. "These problems are a little bit different in that they're basically invisible."

Russill introduced a 10-minute video filmed by students in his COMM 413 class. The video opened with classical music, fading into a picture of Sackett Building and a voice announcing, "The Sackett Report: Institute of Higher Learning or Environmental Nightmare."

The film detailed short testimonies of students who attend classes in Sackett and continued to focus on specific structural problems. The camera zoomed in on images of duct tape strips on windows, dripping faucets, trashcans overflowing with paper towels and recycling bins filled with trash.

"Either people couldn't read or there just weren't (recycling) facilities," said Tara McDonough (senior-civil engineering), commenting on the film's observation of recycling problems. McDonough is a member of the Green Design Team and the project coordinator for the Sackett Report.

The audience laughed along with the examples of waste in the building revealed by the film. McDonough quoted a statistic citing the amount of money lost through single pane windows in Sackett Building each year. While the university spends $22,000 to heat Sackett each year, $8,000 dissipates through the windows with the heat loss.

"This is our tuition money quite literally going down the drain, or out the window," said Josh Pearce, Mueller Project Coordinator. Pearce was involved with the similar Mueller Report released last fall identifying Mueller as one of many buildings where significant changes can be made to save money and energy. Tom Cohan (junior-broadcast journalism) was one of the filmmakers of the Sackett documentary. He said he was surprised with his findings.

"I'm not a hug-a-tree type of person, but I'm not happy about tuition going up," he said. "This is one way we can bring it down." To help illustrate the amount of money Penn State could save by implementing more ecologically and economically efficient changes, the presentation included a section comparing these investments to the university's ventures in the stock market. If the university makes small changes now, it will be able to see immense returns in the future, Pearce said.

"These are guaranteed investments," he said. "This is a guaranteed win."