Lack of AC in many college dorms

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to college in Connecticut. It would be dumb to retrofit for CAC there. It maybe would have been used two weeks.

What?! It's not only hot in CT two weeks a year.

But students are only on campus for 9 months--typcially late August to mid may at most, unless quarter system.
For summer school students housed on campus, most colleges do utilized the dorms with AC, and students are not "required" to live on campus. But for the regular school year, unless you are in the South (Texas, Florida, Arizona, etc) AC is only needed for 2-3 weeks. Fans and natural cooling at night work fine

This. Hang out in classrooms and the library during the day and then by nighttime in New England in September and May, it’s usually not too hot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

South is very different that Wi/Boston/UVA/etc. In south, it's hot in Jan/Feb sometimes. But for areas where the heat is normally gone by mid Sept, it would be a waste of money to retrofit dorms. But FL or AL or TX, I wouldn't' send my kid without AC dorm, but then again, I wouldn't send my kid there for many reasons (and my kids don't want to go for the exact same reasons).

[Anonymous]

I’ve found that 95% of the things the parents are concerned about on the parent pages are non issues for the actual students. The parents are the whiners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

Then go somewhere with AC in all dorms. This is entirely within your control.

This is exactly what the parent on the FB page was basically told by hundreds of parents. Most parents agreed that they would NOT want the university spending millions for AC in old dorms---would rather the money go towards academic buildings/staff/academic features that would benefit their kids. But if that or a lazy river in the dorm was really that important they could definately find a school that had that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ve found that 95% of the things the parents are concerned about on the parent pages are non issues for the actual students. The parents are the whiners.

I was just looking at the JMU Reddit and there were several threads about dorms in response to questions from incoming students. The lack of AC in several older dorms was discussed. Basically, the answers from current students were mostly along the lines that yes, having no AC sucks for a few weeks of the year, but you just deal with it. So no, the lack of AC was not a complete non-issue, but neither was it a big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to college in Connecticut. It would be dumb to retrofit for CAC there. It maybe would have been used two weeks.

What?! It's not only hot in CT two weeks a year.

It is during the college school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

This is where i come out. And look, my dorm had no A/C in a place where we roasted for about a month, and then froze our collective a$$es off in the winter.

If I'm paying $20-60K (or more) per year for my child to go to school (plus incidentals on top of that), you had best bet I expect there to be heat and A/C for however long as it's needed.

[Anonymous]

Given the repeated heat waves and rise in temperatures over the past decade, I agree that all dorms should have a/c. We already pay enough in exorbitant tuition and student fees so students should be comfortable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’ve found that 95% of the things the parents are concerned about on the parent pages are non issues for the actual students. The parents are the whiners.

I was just looking at the JMU Reddit and there were several threads about dorms in response to questions from incoming students. The lack of AC in several older dorms was discussed. Basically, the answers from current students were mostly along the lines that yes, having no AC sucks for a few weeks of the year, but you just deal with it. So no, the lack of AC was not a complete non-issue, but neither was it a big deal.

Also several posts saying the benefits of putting in deposit early and/or being in honors college is first dibs on the best dorms and to schedule classes. One response to a poster whining it wasn't fair to waitlisted kids like him that they got the "suckiest" dorms and classes, "well, you should have gotten better grades in high school to not get waitlisted."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

This is where i come out. And look, my dorm had no A/C in a place where we roasted for about a month, and then froze our collective a$$es off in the winter.

If I'm paying $20-60K (or more) per year for my child to go to school (plus incidentals on top of that), you had best bet I expect there to be heat and A/C for however long as it's needed.

Ok, then send your child to a school where all dorms have A/C. Gosh, isn't that easy? (I know, I know- but then what would I have to b***h about!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

South is very different that Wi/Boston/UVA/etc. In south, it's hot in Jan/Feb sometimes. But for areas where the heat is normally gone by mid Sept, it would be a waste of money to retrofit dorms. But FL or AL or TX, I wouldn't' send my kid without AC dorm, but then again, I wouldn't send my kid there for many reasons (and my kids don't want to go for the exact same reasons).

Because snowflakes melt?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

This is where i come out. And look, my dorm had no A/C in a place where we roasted for about a month, and then froze our collective a$$es off in the winter.

If I'm paying $20-60K (or more) per year for my child to go to school (plus incidentals on top of that), you had best bet I expect there to be heat and A/C for however long as it's needed.

And then the time to worry about that is when you are applying to colleges. If you apply to a school that has less than 40% of dorms with AC, then you don't get to complain "it isn't fair" when your kid gets assigned a dorm without AC. If that was what actually matters that much for you, you only pick schools with all dorms AC'd. Good luck with that by the way outside of the south, because as of 2018, 7 or the 8 Ivies have no ac in dorms and the one that does (columbia) had only about 10 rooms literally with AC. Don't think much has changed in the last 5 years either. Point being that most of the midwest/northeast dorms simply do not have AC---very expensive to retrofit older dorms with it, and not worth the cost for just 3-4 weeks of the year.


I prefer for my kids to focus on the academics and career opportunities at their universities (internship, coops, research), etc. Whether there is AC in dorms or a lazy river on campus really isn't important for my kid's selection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Given the repeated heat waves and rise in temperatures over the past decade, I agree that all dorms should have a/c. We already pay enough in exorbitant tuition and student fees so students should be comfortable.

So you would be happy paying for the dorms to be retrofitted? Or multiple brand new dorms to be built on a college campus (where I don't know as they need to use the old dorms until the new one is built)?
Brand new dorm that opened on my kids campus in 2018 cost $110 million to build (in 2016/2017/2018). That's for ~850 students. Donors donated all of the money for that to happen. Without donors, costs of tuition and R&B would skyrocket to ridiculous rates.

Cost to retrofit a dorm would easily be $15-20Million (had a contractor on the FB group commenting that it would be at least that, if not more, and likely would be a ton more). I for one, would prefer any school my kid attends use that $20M times 8-10 dorms for academic programs. Sure AC would be nice, but I'm not planning to pay an extra $10K+ per year for my kid to have AC for the 2-3 weeks it's needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a college in the south that had many dorms without AC. It was horrible for multiple months of the year. I remember having headaches, not being able to sleep, just being gross and hot all the time. This was 15 years ago and they have since retrofitted their dorms with AC. If you're paying $50k a year for college, you shouldn't be sweating where you live.

South is very different that Wi/Boston/UVA/etc. In south, it's hot in Jan/Feb sometimes. But for areas where the heat is normally gone by mid Sept, it would be a waste of money to retrofit dorms. But FL or AL or TX, I wouldn't' send my kid without AC dorm, but then again, I wouldn't send my kid there for many reasons (and my kids don't want to go for the exact same reasons).

Because snowflakes melt?

Not too bright are you. Because it's not 90+ for more than a few week of the college academic calendar.

[Anonymous]

I can remember placing a large fan in the window for the first 2-3 weeks of the school year. Other than that it wasn't really an issue. I didn't spend much time in the dorm if I could help it anyway.