Norwich University students know what to expect when packing for college in Vermont. They know the winter is long and cold and they should bring warm clothes.
But students may not expect the cold weather to seep indoors.
Students living in the dorms on the Upper Parade Ground and Crawford Hall say the heat is not sufficient.
“I lived on Dodge on the fifth floor,” said Jacquelyn Chafe, 21, a junior psychology major from Northfield, Vt. “It was miserable. Usually it was ice cold in my room, even with the heater turned all the way up.”
Students in rooms with inadequate heat say they bundle up with sweatshirts and blankets to keep from shivering. “Getting out of bed in the morning was miserable, trying to do homework was miserable because I couldn’t feel my fingers most of the time,” Chafe said.
“I feel that they turn on the heat when the school wants to turn it on,” said Nicole Fabbo, 20, a junior history and political science major from Everett, Mass. “It will be cold and you’ll go to turn the heater on and nothing will happen.”
“I have friends who are in the corps who I’ve heard the exact same thing from,” Fabbo said. “I knew a person my freshman year that lived in Gerard and it took facilities operations a half a year to fix their heat.”
Students on campus report that the heat goes from one extreme to another. It is either extremely hot and almost unbearable or it is really cold and students need to bundle up.
“When the heat’s on, it’s really hot. When it’s not, you have to bundle up,” Fabbo said. “There is absolutely and totally no happy medium.”
“I lived in Dodge Hall and my room was always really, really, really hot,” said Dayle-Ashley Wade, 19, a sophomore psychology major from Monroe, Conn. “We always had to keep the windows open, even when it was negative-degree weather outside.”
“It was impossible to live in. It was really hot. I didn’t want to stay in my room, it was that disgusting. You would just get really sweaty and gross,” Wade said.
Dave Magida, Norwich’s chief administrative officer, acknowledges that the heating situation is not ideal.
“Providing heat to the dorm rooms is a struggle because of the age of the dorms and the age of the systems,” he said. “Unfortunately, some rooms are going to be overheated to make sure every room is up to a temperature of 70 degrees.
“We work as best as we can with the existing system,” he said. “But the old design makes it difficult for us to keep every room at exactly 70 degrees.
“That said,” he added, “If a student’s room is significantly hotter or colder they need to call us and let us know.”
Students need to make sure that furniture doesn’t block their radiator and the controls they do have in their room are set properly.
Students also say that the heating situation has other issues.
“And it lead to a lot of illnesses since I was always freezing and I have a bad immune system,” Chafe said.
“When you paint over the heaters and then you have the heaters on, that releases more toxins and more flumes into the air and that is not healthy,” said Fabbo. “And especially with the way this school turns the heat on, just crank it up; that’s not healthy.”