Every year at fall break, students flee Beloit College for a week, leaving their dorm rooms behind — and every year, students return to Beloit College to find those dorm rooms resembling nothing so much as a sauna-y hell. Temperatures in rooms around campus soared as those who had left their AC or fans on full blast were suddenly set to full heat. But this isn’t a new phenomenon. Last year, Maurer Hall was also uncomfortably hot, to the point that two of our writers ran an article about it. This year, the situation promises to be no different. 

“I got an email from my RA that said that they would be adjusting the thermostat,” said Betty Cavicchia’28. Cavicchia lives in Whitney Hall, one of the more recently renovated dorms on campus. “At first it felt nice…but that night and the following night I had really bad sleep. A couple of times I woke up with the remnants of a nosebleed…because of the dry heat that was blasting at me.” 

But while students can try their best to mitigate the heat within their own rooms, some of the consistently hottest places on campus, in fact seem to be the ground floors or common areas. Last year Maurer’s Link and accompanying laundry room and kitchen were near-uninhabitable after the heat was turned on, leading to several student reports. This year, I personally observed extreme heat in both Chapin’s and Blaisdell’s entryways — and there are nearly certainly more dorms that have been affected.  

“Even now, I still have to keep my windows open when I’m gone, because the heaters leak heat, whether the fan is off or not,” said Chyler Smith’28. Smith lives on the second floor of Bushnell Hall. “We should be able to have control over that, and I kind of wish we would…cause I’m roasting every single night.” 

“Now I’ve been having to sleep with the window cracked, that’s the only thing that helps with the temperature,” Cavicchia also said. I’ve seen enough windows open in the recent mid-thirties nighttime weather to say that they aren’t the only ones employing this method to keep cool.

With the rising temperatures yearly — in this early October, Beloit has still seen several highs in the 80°-range — the question of whether it’s wise to be turning the heat on so early, and to such extremes while students can’t easily act on it while they’re away, remains.

Featured image: CBS47