When the university turned the air conditioning off and the heat on in some dorms on the campus last week, junior Erik Webster tried to adapt.
The aerospace engineering major turned off his fan and opened all the windows in his South Campus Commons apartment. And while air conditioning would have been nice, Webster said the situation wasn’t all that bad.
Until it started raining on Friday.
As it rained off and on all evening, Webster found himself repeatedly opening and closing the windows, having to choose between a hot apartment and a wet apartment.
Thousands of students living in dorms, and some living in South Campus Commons, faced similar problems after the university made the switch from air conditioning to heat between Oct. 15 and 17.
The majority of Capstone Management’s South Campus Commons and Courtyards apartments have individual controls that let residents decide when to turn the air conditioning on and off. Commons Buildings 1 and 2 are designed similar to the dorms. Cold water runs through pipes to cool the buildings and hot water heats it, said Capstone maintenance supervisor David Hawley.
Because the process of switching from pumping cold water to hot water takes several days, Capstone and the university can only make the switch once in the fall and once in the spring.
“It got down to 50 yesterday, so if I turn on the heat then you can’t get AC anymore this year,” he said.
The system, which relies on water coolers and boilers, is efficient but also a customer service nightmare, Hawley said. He said he gets at least one petition each year to turn the heat or AC on again during unseasonal weather.
Capstone Management even sent out an e-mail Thursday to all residents of Buildings 1 and 2 to explain why the heat had been turned on.
“We follow the university’s schedule to make this system switch … it is not as simple to switch it back when there are temporary warm spells,” the e-mail read.
But what students can’t figure out is why the university decided to make the irreversible switch last week.
Many students were caught unaware of the change, despite last-minute flyers in building lobbies, which alerted residents that the heat would be turned on.
Raybits said at least five or six people asked him what was going on during his shift Wednesday morning, when the transition process was completed. Several students thought their cooling unit was broken and came downstairs to ask what to do, he said.
But once the students realized the heat problem was permanent, Raybits said he started getting angry complaints and sarcastic comments as residents walked by the front desk.
Still, some students say the problem isn’t that bad.
“You get used to the temperature when you’re in the room long enough,” said junior art history major Vicki Chisholm. “It’s only really bad when you first walk in.”
Capstone’s e-mail points out that the weather will ease soon anyway.
“We have researched the 10 day forecast and the weather appears to be decreasing in temperature especially in the evenings,” the e-mail informed residents.
But that didn’t do much to comfort students like Sahu.
“I came into my room and it felt like a sauna,” she said. ‘It felt better outside.”
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