Daylight Saving Time is slated to begin March 11 this year, two weeks earlier than usual-a fact that has the potential to cause time mismatches on Duke's campus and across the nation.
The change is part of President George W. Bush's 2005 Energy Policy Act, which he called a first step toward a more affordable and reliable energy future for U.S. citizens.
Bush said he hopes that moving DST will save energy, but Tom Welch, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy, said there is no evidence that the change will increase energy efficiency.
Welch added that a report completed last fall found the potential for energy conservation to be fairly negligible.
"Consider this an experiment that Congress thinks is worthy of making," Welch said. "We'll find out after the fact whether it was a wise move."
Energy aside, changing the dates of DST could have other effects on the nation.
"For most people and for a lot of companies the effect of this will be forgetting to change the clock," said Dave Thewlis, executive director of the national Calendaring and Scheduling Consortium.
Computers and other technology are programmed to make the time change automatically-a quandary that has earned the DST change the nickname "mini Y2K."
"There are industries where the implications of mismatched time would be more significant," Thewlis said. "The financial world, hospitals and the airline industry could all be more severely affected."
He added that if the change does not proceed smoothly, airlines may find their timetables off, and financial sectors may have difficulties successfully completing transactions such as international fund transfers.
Welch said there may be other downsides as well. Some children might have to go to school in the dark, there may be more traffic accidents or there could be an increase in crime, he said.
Spokespeople from both Microsoft and Apple said the problem in computers will be remedied through an automatic update system or, for customers with older systems, through a downloadable patch that will perform the same function as an automatic update.
Other than worrying about their own personal computers, officials at Duke's Office of Information Technology said students should have no concerns about the DST change affecting the University.
"By and large we've completed the process," said Kevin Miller, senior manager of information technologies for OIT. "For the network side, all our patches are applied. We've been planning these changes for a few months at least."
Miller added, however, that many universities and companies he has spoken with only recently realized the changes were coming.
And many students on campus may not know about the change in the first place.
"It just sounds like a huge pain in the ass," said sophomore Marion McMillan, who added that he had no idea the change was being implemented.
Tom O'Brian, a spokesperson for the National Institute of Standards and Technology said that this is a relatively easy switch.
"We've been implementing this change twice a year now for a long time," O'Brien said. "All we had to do was make simple changes in our software, and we've done that and tested it.... People can be assured that if they're using our technology they will be seeing the right time."
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