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Recycle bins, wall clocks and towel dispensers. What these items have in common is an effort by the campus to be green. Some of them are worthwhile, like the recycle bins, and some are just plain hilarious. Since the worthwhile ones are not very fun to write about, I chose five of my favorite hilarious ones.

The clocks (saving time)

I get the biggest laugh out of the clock situation on campus. Whichever building you wander into, and whichever classroom in that building you are in, has a clock that reads a different time.

The clocks in Faner Hall are the worst. Every clock, I mean every clock, says a different time and they are usually wrong. Sometimes, this is cause for a laugh.

When your watch says 11:00 and the clock says 6:30, you know it's not 6:30 and you just move on. However, when your watch says 11:00 and that clock says 11:30, you get quite frantic. Did I miss my class? Did my watch stop?

Some clocks are stopped altogether, and some wall clocks have other clocks beside them that tell the real time. So, you look back and forth to determine the true time based on the lighting outside and the time your wristwatch and your cell phone and the computer on the desk display.

It really takes a math major to figure out how wrong the clocks are. You might be able to work out a system. For example, the clock in your classroom is always two hours and 15 minutes ahead of the real time, so, every time you look at it, you subtract two hours and 15 minutes.

The lights (saving energy)

Every other light has a little green sticker on it. If you look close enough, they say "saving energy".

This looks great; the campus is saving energy by turning off half of the lights down a given hall. I really don't know why they don't yank out the nonworking fixtures. I think it is to give the impression we are really saving energy. After all, if they took them out, who would know that we had turned off half the lights down all the halls?

My other problem with the saving-energy light problem is that, in some cases, the lights that are not supposed to be saving energy burn out, leaving the halls dark. I often joke that the campus has decided to save too much energy by turning out half of the lights and then letting the other half burn out.

The towel dispensers (saving paper)

Every bathroom you walk into has at least one, if not two, automatic paper towel dispensers. These are supposed to save trees by not allowing us to take loads of paper towels.

To operate the dispenser you walk over to it, shake your wet hands in front of it like you're waving a magic wand, and expect a piece of paper to shoot out at you. But, there is a problem: You didn't wave your hands correctly. So, you are standing there, waving your hands, eventually resorting to dancing around it, trying to make the magic paper come out. In final frustration, you bang on it.

Still no good.

The person behind you, who has been watching you the whole time, and also waiting for the magic dispenser of wonder, nudges you aside and waves her hand in front of the machine. Paper appears. By this time, you have dried your hands on your pants and decide to exit the bathroom. Feeling dejected as the door shuts behind you, you hear the irritating noise of the dispenser pushing out paper.

I ran out of space, so I will continue with points four and five next week. In the mean time, be sure to carry a working watch, a flashlight and a plan of attack for the towel dispensers.

Lindsay is a senior studying journalism.

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