Dear Housing,
I mean no disrespect, however, I live here and I like to abide by your rules and not bring active fire hazards into my unit in university housing. Therefore, as someone who does not have a space heater, I implore you to please, for the love of all things holy, consider turning the furnaces on.
Frankly, I am cold. I am a cold girl. I am shivering, I cannot study in my dorm because my hands are cold, and I slept in two pairs of socks last night.
I love you; I enjoy living on campus, but I really don’t want to have to start turning my oven on just to keep my dorm at a manageable temperature. Now, maybe I’m in the wrong here and by the time this is printed the furnaces will be on and I’m just yelling into the void, if so, that’s fair, that’s on me.
However, I’ve noticed that, over my past year’s pf living on campus, housing drags its feet on switching from heating to cooling and vice versa during the fall and spring, and I find that slightly ridiculous.
Last year, for instance, there were spring days that it was in the 90’s outside, but that was cooler than the third floor of the building. I find that to be a safety issue overall. For one, I have low blood pressure, and excessive heat makes that worse. I’d really prefer being able to stand up without the fear of falling and injuring myself.
Secondly, issues with heating and cooling threaten the welfare of campus emotional support animals. While their owners can go to cooler common spaces, however, by university policy, their animals cannot. How would you feel if you were trapped in the heat in a thick fur coat?
Speaking of cooler common spaces, I notice the office spaces on campus tend to get their heating and cooling transitioned faster than the residential buildings, which I find very annoying.
My guess is that the people who have the power to transition to heating had their furnaces going last night, and I’m certain they’d be upset if their office was excessively hot or cold, so why do they think we react any differently?
To be fair, I think I’ve heard about the systems being automatic by something or another, but I’d be willing to put money on there being a manual over-ride to the system too, and I think that, with what we pay in tuition, we deserve to see it used more.
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