By Cassidy Hamilton

Senior Staff Writer
I was recently indulging in some routine Facebook poking around when I came across a friend’s status: “Can we all take a moment to appreciate the fact that its 5:30 p.m. and its nowhere near dark. Summer’s comiiiinnnnng!!!”

As it happens, I already had this epiphany just moments before as I was walking out of Psychology, my last class of the week. I had looked out in the south/west direction at the beautiful mountains and apartments behind campus as the sun was setting. (If you’ve never taken the time to check out this view around sunset, I highly recommend you do so. It is worth the detour.)

Anyways, I commented on this friend’s status, “I always get so happy the first time I realize this every year, haha.” This comment received four “likes” of presumed agreement from others, to which one of my friends replied, “Its one of those good moments in life.”

Simple, but she could not be more right in my eyes, and this is precisely why I feel that preserving the daylight saving time tradition is entirely necessary to society. It gives me hope, hope that summer is on its way, hope that I can get through the remainder of the school year; and it brings me joy thinking of all the good times that lay ahead in the months of summer — the first sign of this being the prolonged light.

The tradition of DST (daylight saving time) was actually introduced by Europeans during World War I. The motive behind this push forward in measured time was that more hours of daylight would conserve coal for the efforts of the war. The reason we have kept the tradition all these years has not changed much since its initial implementation. The idea is that people will preserve energy by waiting until later to use the lights in their houses.

While this remains true, I think it has developed into something much bigger than this. Although waking up an hour earlier certainly sets a damper on my mornings for the first week or so, daylight savings has become a cultural practice that we cannot simply abandon at this point.

 It is a ritual, a sign of society emerging from the dark winter months and into the beautiful, lighter summer months. I will gladly wake up an hour earlier if it means I can continue to catch the breathtaking views of the sun setting into the mountains when I get out of class each afternoon.