Samatha Paul
@samantha_alexx
Students have once again returned to Springfield College for the start of the new academic year, but this fall, temperatures are increasing, and students are certainly feeling the heat.
During just the first week of classes, temperatures in Springfield reached upward of 90 degrees, and everyone in the campus community was trying to beat the heat. Unfortunately, for students living in International and Alumni Halls, this was made a bit more difficult, as these are two of the residence halls on campus with no air conditioning.
“Hallways, bathrooms, rooms… ridiculously hot,” second-year student Dan McGlashan said regarding the heat in International Hall. As a resident of the fifth floor, McGlashan said that the heat rose fast. “People had thermometers in their room that read 93. I heard of people sleeping in the library, I know people on my floor that did it. I slept on top of my sheets, my bed, my comforter… that hall was almost unbearable.”
To some students, it seems as though the college is doing little to nothing to care for its students in these residence halls, with some students making the decision to stay with friends in the Senior Suites, Townhouses, and Living Center. Some residents even drove home just to have a cool space to spend the night.
“From my understanding… it absolutely was an outside-of-the-normal realm heat wave,” Mike Russo, Associate Director of Housing and Residence Life, said. “We understand that there are buildings that don’t have air conditioning and we always will work with our leadership and with the students in order to get them the services that they need.”
On behalf of students, living both in these residence halls and elsewhere on campus, the overwhelming sentiment was that rather than focusing on new construction, facilities should put more resources toward the buildings and students that are already on campus.
I think that investing in central air conditioning for these dorms would be an efficient solution and a way to avoid a similar issue in the future. Russo points out that this would be a massive undertaking for the college to retrofit such large—and in the case of Alumni Hall— old buildings.
Residence Life sent an email to the student body midweek, sharing that the college extended operational hours in the Richard B. Flynn Campus Union, an air-conditioned space on campus, to give students a way to escape the suffocating heat.
However, with no changes being made in the residence halls themselves, some residents decided to take action into their own hands, bringing their own units to campus to make the temperatures of the dorms liveable.
Alumni Hall, the oldest residence hall on campus, is not equipped to support the voltage of individual AC units across several floors. As a result, the power cut out in multiple rooms.
Russo clarified that these units are not allowed in dorms unless students have otherwise received specific accommodations. He also added that there are specifications that the air conditioners need to meet so that Springfield College can then accommodate that power consumption.
“Students who require an air conditioner, either an air-conditioned space or an air-conditioner unit, would be assigned what we would call a medical housing space in one of our apartment-style areas,” Russo explained. “If they’re unable to have one of those spaces, they are permitted to, if approved by the Disability and Accessibility Services Office, bring a stand-up unit.”
As a happy medium between residents’ requests and what Residence Life and Facilities Management are able to accomplish, Russo recommends that residents bring window fans to campus, which circulate air in and out of the room. Otherwise, it seems it’s up to students to choose a residence hall with air conditioning next fall.
Photo courtesy of Springfield College