Sitting in class, sweltering, eyelids drooping in the intense heat, wiping your brow as you try to deliriously jot down some notes while fantasizing about a cold shower and a bowl of ice cream – this isn’t what class should be like in November and December.
But as the gas prices mount and the university scrambles to find a way to fund rising energy costs, professors and students prop open the windows to their classrooms and dorm rooms trying to get rid of the overpowering heat that continues to run on warm days, and even on cold days it runs so high in some buildings that just sitting at a desk is a sweat-inducing activity.
Facilities Management officials explained that turning the heat on and off is a at least a day-long process and costs a great deal of money in operating costs, making the notion of flipping the system on and off depending on the weather out of the question.
All signs point to the necessity for a new system.
University administrators have labeled rising fuel costs a long-term problem – one that won’t go away and may only get worse. One of the long-term solutions the university should explore is updating its heating and air conditioning system to one that would save money in the long run.
In the meantime, students open their windows and watch the increased student fee money they’ll be paying next year float away with the excess heating. It’s waste at its worse, and the money it would take to implement a forward-looking strategy – upgrading the system to one that isn’t as ineffective and wasteful – would pay off.
University administrators should consider a solution to the all-or-nothing proposition of the current heating system as an investment – one that won’t waste energy and one that would take a huge bite out of the energy problems we face now and could encounter well into the future.
To continue ignoring this issue is to devote our immediate future to sweltering classrooms and perspiring students and faculty – an uncomfortably ironic situation for a school facing a real energy cost crisis.
