Daylight savings—its very existence may be the very worst part of November. Let’s face it, no one likes it when it’s dark out when you wake up and dark when you get out of school. It’s a large contributor to seasonal depression and marks the end of most outdoor activity for the year. Apart from one hour of extra sleep for a single night, I can find no positives that daylight saving time brings to my life. After all, the days get shorter naturally. So why do we help it along?
Many people believe we do daylight savings to help the farmers we do daylight saving time is to help farmers. But is this really true? . In talking to Wesley Vaughn of the local Growing Garden Farms, I asked what effect the time shift has on their day-to-day operations. He told us that it does not affect much. Wesley Vaughn “The change in time has more of an effect on my personal body battery than it does on any of our farming operations.” He told us the farm works with the sun regardless of what the clock says, and that in November, farm operations are slim, so the time change makes little difference in the fall. He put it bluntly, saying, “Overall, I don’t think it has a benefit to the farm.”
In fact, the origins of the practice have nothing to do with the farmers. So why have we developed daylight saving time? Originally, it was imposed to save energy in wartime. The theory was that people would be awake for more of the daylight and asleep for more of the dark, therefor, we would have to burn less fuel for lights and other commodities. Daylight savings was first implemented in 1918 during the First World War, but was shortly repealed due to its unpopularity. There have been a few attempts and iterations, notably in 1942, to counter energy shortages from the Second World War and in 1973 to counter an oil embargo placed on the U.S. But the system as we know it today was put in place in 1986, according to a CNN article from 2007.
We know the origins of the practice, but why do we continue to do it? One main reason is energy. According to a New York Times article, studies done in the 1970s (so somewhat out of date), every day that the system is in place, we save about 1 percent of energy usage, which seems negligible, but given the massive amount of energy we as a society consume, that percentage is significant. Another is transportation safety; people feel safer in the daylight, and crime is much less likely to occur in the light of day. According to a book by David Prerau, during times of daylight saving in Washington, DC, violent crime was reduced by 10 to 13 percent. So there are benefits to the practice and reasons for it to continue.
Students at Boulder High School seem to be mostly indifferent toward daylight saving. In interviews with several students, reactions were mostly neutral, although there were a few negative comments. Emily Greenburg, ‘28, said, “I feel like I just sleep more and I don’t actually get my work done.” It seems that most of the student body does not share my impassioned loathing towards earlier nights. Perfectly illustrated by Rory Morningstar ‘28, when she said, “I can understand how it affects some people, but I don’t really see an effect on me.”
Given the historical precedence of the practice, the benefits in safety and energy consumption, and the fact that it seems to have little adverse effect on the students, it would seem that daylight saving does have a place in our society. But I still don’t like it!
