Why must college students sit in the dark?

I'm doing a research paper titled "Why Sit in the Dark?" It is supposed to be a study on why students, specifically college students for this study, sit in the dark (surprise, surprise). I got the idea for the topic from my Atomic Bomb course professor. He's also there a few minutes late because his previous class is across campus and the lights are always turned off when he gets in. As he said "In the past twenty years teaching here, not one student made the move to turn the lights on before I got here."

What I'm asking here is if there is any previous research made into the concept. I've yet to find anything in the past while of searching the interwebs. If I am unable to find any, I may have to drop the topic and write the paper on something else.