The residential college JKL and fraternity Sigma Chi won a trophy, but not for any athletic feat.

They were the winners of the first Green Cup competition.

Washington University tried to cut down on energy consumption by pitting all of the South 40 Residential Colleges against each other, and all of the fraternity houses against each other.

JKL won the ResCollege portion of the event by reducing its energy intake by 12.3 percent.

Sigma Chi won the fraternity round of the competition by cutting its energy consumption by 16.6 percent.

The winners were announced on Friday.

Senior Chris Brennan came up with the idea for the competition and planned it with Will Fischer, a fellow in the Office of Sustainability.

In order to keep track of the total energy consumption, meters had to be installed in each building.

According to Fisher, the winning teams posted a greater reduction than he initially expected.

Based on prior experiments at other universities, Fischer did not expect the reductions to top 10 percent.

Fischer says that he hopes this will become an annual tradition.

“I think that this is a really positive message for everyone to hear—the idea of a Green Cup is something I hope people take to heart. I was blown away by the participation in the fraternities. There was a remarkable amount of participation; I think this is such a great foundation for continuing the competition in future years,” Fischer said.

According to Fischer, some students went to extremes to ensure that they decreased their energy use.

The Sigma Chi brothers refused to turn on the air conditioning in their house during the competition.

Other students took less drastic measures, like unplugging their appliances before leaving their rooms.

“It was really neat to see people approaching the issue not as something politicized but as ‘Hey we need to do something to lower our energy consumption,’” Fischer said.

Still, most students did not recognize the impact that the competition had on their everyday lives or those of their peers.

“I don’t think the competition helped with the energy consumption. I didn’t notice any change in behavior in students. People have also been saying traditional dorms would win, so they didn’t even need to try,” sophomore Brooke Husic said.

Freshman Paige VanTassell says that most people she knows already acted in an environmentally conscious way before the competition.

“I think people normally turn off their light when they leave and such anyway. I didn’t notice any change in how people act,” VanTassell said

Brennan hopes that the lessons learned from the competition will carry over into students’ everyday lives.

“The idea of the competition—having people change to more socially responsible behavior—was definitely more important than the total electricity savings it produced. Hopefully those changes can carry over after the competition,” Brennan said.

With additional reporting by Wei-Yin Ko.