In yet another display of Dartmouth’s courageous commitment to fiscal discipline, the College opted to open up Sarner Underground as an air-conditioned sleep space to the student body this summer for a single week from July 15 to July 18. Though it is noble of them to provide such a space in this year’s sweltering weather, I am neither a member of ROTC nor a soldier on the front lines of the Great War, so I find these temporary accommodations less than preferable at a school endowed with more money than the Gross Domestic Product of Lichtenstein.
As the generally conservative-minded student that I am, I usually try to provide the benefit of the doubt to Dartmouth administrators, but the current state of support for students in the summer heat is severely below par. Though some dorm halls do have air conditioning, many do not — and even those that do often have poorly functioning systems that feel as if they push around warm air rather than make one’s room more tolerable.
Even worse, the College doesn’t let its students solve these problems for themselves. In a fine stroke of administrative genius, college policies state that personal air conditioners are forbidden from use in dorms and if a student is found in violation of this policy, they will be subject to a “$50 fine and possible disciplinary action.” Because heaven forbid students try to avoid heatstroke.
Obviously, the policies are likely in place to prevent liability issues, accidental fires or any other form of negligent behaviour by college students. Or perhaps they don’t want to foot the electric bill of sophomores running their ACs day and night. It, of course, makes perfect sense for the College to accept and implicitly condone the Animal House behaviour of fraternities but fail to trust an Ivy League student to operate an air conditioner.
The College should change this no tolerance policy — perhaps by providing a list of College-approved air conditioners. With the money that Dartmouth has, there must be a better solution than the barracks of Sarner Underground. The College should be fully capable of providing window air conditioners to students in dorms without proper air conditioning in the short term and installing central air conditioning in each dorm hall in the long term. If cost is a concern, perhaps the College could purchase a certain number of units and rent them out for a reduced fixed price for the duration of the summer term. Some may argue that Dartmouth Student Government, who were recently able to secure several fans for free use for students without AC, could take on this task. However, with a budget of only $70,000, DSG simply does not have the resources to take on a project of this magnitude while maintaining its other commitments.
Thankfully, Dartmouth has yet to suffer a casualty as a result of the heat. However, heatstroke, dehydration and other heat-related health issues should be significant concerns. In the United States, there are an estimated 60,000 emergency room visits for heatstroke annually, with an unknown number of other Americans suffering from it without visiting the emergency room. Even beyond the above catastrophizing, hot dorm rooms can substantially interfere with sleep quality, which can have knock-on effects on the ability of students to actively participate in rigorous classes. According to experts, the ideal temperature to sleep at rests somewhere between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit. In Hanover, summer temperatures at 11 p.m. often rest at 75 degrees or hotter.
If we were at a college in which summer semesters were purely optional or simply did not exist, this would be less of a concern, but with close to the entire sophomore class on campus in any given summer, it should be guaranteed to each student that they will be provided a dorm with functioning air conditioning or allowed to install their own window unit. For a university with an $8 billion dollar endowment, gerryrigging Sarner Underground to be a doughboy’s barracks for a week in the summer is simply not enough.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Luke Montalbano ’27 is an opinion editor and writer. He is from Vancouver, Canada and is majoring in Government and minoring in History. On campus, Luke is a Dickey Center War and Peace Fellow, the Co-President of the Federalist Society of Dartmouth, the President of the American Conservation Coalition of Dartmouth and President of the John Quincy Adams Society.
