Students cope with overheated dorms during summer months

It was a normal summer day when Andrew Stuckwisch got back from running several miles across campus.

As he climbed the stairs to his third-floor dorm in Snyder Hall, the temperature progressively increased. By the time he entered his room, the mechanical engineering junior could no longer breathe. The heat had triggered his asthma.

“I had to take my inhaler outside before I came back up,” Stuckwisch said.

After the incident, the first asthma attack triggered by heat that Stuckwisch has had in several years, he measured the temperature in his room — it was 94 degrees Fahrenheit, with 50 percent humidity.

As of Tuesday, the past month has been the fifth-hottest July in Lansing since 1863, according to the Grand Rapids, Mich. National Weather Service Forecast Office. The average temperature for the month is 75.8 degrees Fahrenheit, only two degrees below the hottest year on record, 1921. The dew point, a similar heat measurement to humidity, also has been high throughout the month.

The record heat, combined with a lack of central air conditioning in the dorms, has led to uncomfortable conditions for some students living on campus.

Stuckwisch eventually paid $100 for an air conditioner and $50 for MSU to install it in his room. But MSU only allows students to have air conditioning units if they need the unit because of health problems and have a doctor’s note because the university is trying to minimize energy costs, said Tony Frewen, a spokesman for Residential and Hospitality Services.

“It’s a fact of the buildings and when they were built and how they were built — it does get hot,” Frewen said. “We realize that, and we certainly try to remind people to bring fans and help them out any way that they can.”

Air conditioning is being added to renovated lounges and cafeterias, such as The Gallery in Snyder and Phillips halls and the newly renovated Brody Square dining facility in Brody Hall, Frewen said.

To keep students cool during the summer, Frewen said MSU reminds those living in the dorms and coming for summer camps to bring a fan with them. MSU also loans fans if someone has forgotten one and will help a resident get to a store in order to buy a fan.

But using a fan is not always enough, said human resource management junior Colleen Grattan, who is a resident mentor on the third floor of Phillips Hall. Grattan said she found it difficult to be in her room with the heat, despite having two fans in her room, one near the window and one near the door, to keep air circulating.

She said she tries to spend as little time as possible in her dorm.

“There is no air circulating,” Grattan said. “All you have is one tiny window. Residents stay out of the building and go out to the library.”

Grattan said she spends about 1-2 hours a day in her dorm, not including the hours she sleeps. For a period of time, Grattan even took to sleeping with frozen packets of apple sauce to cool off.

“When it’s 90 (degrees) and there is no air, you can’t sleep,” Grattan said. “You wake up in your sweat.”

James McCurtis, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Community Health, said students living in dorms can try to keep cool by taking cool showers, keeping shades closed, wearing light colored clothing and avoiding exercise from noon to 4 p.m., the hottest part of the day.