# University to keep its gutter lights up until week 19

> A School of Emergent Priorities paper surveys 438 households on when their gutter lights came down, and the University adopts the result as the rule for its own buildings.

No seasonal decoration on a University gutter will come down before week 19, and
every University building will keep a single strand lit all year.
Both rules come from "Groundwork for a Take-Down Date", a paper from the School
of Emergent Priorities published today.

> The gutter turned out to be a patient place to put a question. Households
> answered it with more candour than we had planned for.
>
> --- Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities

The paper, by Dr Chikere with Dr Marek Solheim and Dr Anouk Mensah, collects
the replies of 438 households about the week their lights came down, and sets
them out as a spread across the season rather than a single average. The spread
has two clusters and a long tail, and the School has treated its shape as the
finding.

From it the University has drawn a Take-Down Date, a Bulb-Out Tolerance and a
Standing Strand for its own buildings, none with a seasonal exemption. Dr Mensah
said the households had been "unhurried in a way we found instructive".

The release reflects the University's steady interest in ordinary practice as a
source of standards, and in the patience of a strand on an eave.

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ejtc4n.