Residential Life and the members of the Environmental Conservation Organization have teamed up to start Unplug — an on-campus energy conservation competition — during the month of March.The competition asks students to pledge to reduce their carbon footprints — or daily things that make an environmental impact, said Rachel Guillory, Sierra Student Coalition campus organizer.”Since some dorms are older and less efficient than others, students will compete against the energy levels from March of last year,” Guillory said. “The residence hall with the lowest percentage of last year’s levels wins.”ECO plans on a large participation rate for the competition after convincing Kodak to provide free flash drives for students from the winning residence hall, Guillory said.ECO also added incentives for RAs to sign up more students by giving $10 in paw points to the RAs from the residence hall with the most student pledges, said Meredith Soniat, ECO co-president.”Our goal is to have half of all on-campus students or around 2,250 residents to pledge for this competition,” Soniat said.ECO started this competition after following the example of schools like the University of Texas-Austin, and they hope to make it an annual event, Soniat said.”I hope it can be a pilot program that gets bigger and bigger each year,” Guillory said. “We’ll just save more energy and money as time goes on.”Guillory said she would like to see the money they save placed in a revolving fund.This revolving fund could provide money to help refurbish environmentally outdated dorms and fund green projects on campus, Guillory said.ECO and the Freshmen Leadership Council will read the energy meters at residence halls between March 6 and April 3, according to the Residential Life Web site.ECO will announce the final results at the University’s Earth Day celebration April 24.Contact Peter Hubbs atphubbs@lsureveille.com