Each and every year, students at Connecticut College suffer through the extreme heat conditions in the first couple and last couple months of the school year. The school provides air conditioning for NONE of the residential buildings and even prohibits students from bringing their own air conditioners unless given a prescribed doctor's note yet, it’s safe to say that a significant majority if not all of Conn staff enjoy the comfort of air conditioning in their homes. For the majority of the year, the air conditioning will not be as necessary. However, in the 3-5 months that it is, the lack of air conditioning at Conn puts the students in unhealthy living conditions that are a big risk for anyone with or without medical conditions. 

According to Zach Schlader, a physiologist at Indiana University Bloomington, 

“a wet-bulb temperature of around 95º F, or 35º C, is pretty much the absolute limit of human tolerance. Once the temperature has surpassed that, the process whereby your body gets rid of heat loses its efficiency to maintain its core temperature effectively. You won’t die on the spot but the adverse effects of high temperatures will begin to cause damage to [the] brain and organs in the absence of being able to cool down quickly." 

These extreme temperatures are affecting student’s abilities to focus on their education. Furthermore, with record-high temperatures each year, and no anticipated relief in the coming years, these issues are only going to become more and more catastrophic.

There are many things that would greatly benefit the health and well-being of the student body at Connecticut College. This request for healthy living environments is a reasonable request and easily attainable. The PLEX already has air conditioning installed. Turning it on would greatly improve the living standards for a large portion of residents. Following that, there should be a movement to have air conditioning installed in all campus buildings, to include residential and academic buildings.

We kindly ask anyone who shares these same feelings or supports this request for basic living conditions to please sign the petition, share it on social media and community or campus newspapers/sites, or even just tell your friends. Hopefully, our college will finally see the number of people this is impacting and make a change. Thank You.