26

The first two most active threads yesterday were Vice President Kamala Harris-related threads that I've already discussed and, therefore, will skip today. The third most active thread was titled, "Horrible dorm assignment!" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster says that her child is going to college in southern California and, despite requesting a roommate, was assigned a single room in the basement of a building without air conditioning. The original poster is quite unhappy, believing that the school can easily afford to install central air conditioning in the building, and says that the experience has soured them on the university before school even started. A large number of the responses are from posters who also lived in college dorms that did not have air conditioning. Because they survived it, they don't have much sympathy for the original poster's child. Moreover, several posters point out, most students would love to have a single room. Therefore, they suggest the student should be able to trade rooms with someone else fairly easily. Other advice is to open a window and use a fan and that the warm weather will only last a couple of months. A number of those responding are either from California or have spent time there and they explain that temperatures cool off at night and it is not as humid as DC. Therefore, the nights are comfortable and the lack of air conditioning won't be a problem. The attitude of a lot of the posters is that freshmen year dorm experiences are almost always bad and something about which it is normal to have concerns. But, the original poster's child will survive it and she shouldn't worry. Other posters argue that if comfortable dorms were a priority, the original poster should have researched that ahead of time and chosen a college that has nicer dorms. In contrast to the "suck it up" crowd, a number of posters have advice about how to facilitate a room change. Some of these strategies are fairly elaborate with one poster even suggesting that the student grow mold in the room and then justify a room change because of the presence of mold. Much later in the thread, the original poster insisted that the lack of air conditioning was not the most important issue. Rather, her child is going cross-country to school and would now be living in a single room in a corner of the basement and somewhat isolated from other students. The original poster thinks that all of this combined is not conducive to an enjoyable college experience. She was hoping that her child would have a great experience at the university and this has tarnished things. It's possible that the concerns about the room are more on the part of the original poster and perhaps not shared by the student.