As winter brings dropping temperatures to Baltimore and Homewood, students are raising concerns regarding their on-campus housing experiences. Issues range from insufficient hot water to poor insulation around the dorm windows, which are often directly next to students’ beds. Intermittent or occasional maintenance issues are bound to occur in any building, but the frequency and severity of the issues that occur inside the dorms — such as room temperatures dropping below 50 degrees Fahrenheit at night — should justify spending the necessary money to complete large-scale repairs.
Students are required to live in on-campus dorm buildings during their freshman and sophomore years, increasing the frustration felt when their experiences are subpar. Due to the ages of some of the dorm buildings, fixing these issues would not necessarily be quick or easy. Even Wolman Hall, which was recently updated in its interior, may have building-wide issues that need to be addressed. However the benefit of students’ comfort and safety should render the inconvenience of repairs worthwhile.
Replacing the dorm windows with newer, double-paned windows would require significant planning and funding, but this renovation would be a valuable improvement to the current problem of frequent drafts, which prove especially problematic in the winter. It makes neither logistic nor economic sense to take a piecemeal approach to replacing these windows, and although the prospect of a project as large as this is daunting, it is possible. Gaps exist between semesters as do periods during academic breaks during when residence halls are not occupied by many students, and these intervals provide an opportunity for renovation.
The potential for inconvenience should not deter the University from providing students with comfortable living arrangements in the buildings provided for required on-campus housing. Efficiency is important in tackling large-scale projects such as replacing the dorm windows, but the benefit to the student body outweighs the disruption. Especially given the high price of mandatory on-campus housing, the repeated issues of lacking heat and hot water deserve to be addressed. Sufficiently insulated windows are a necessity for the frigid weather that spans a significant portion of the academic year, so fixing these issues should be budgeted if students are required to live on-campus.
More broadly, inconveniences may arise in any housing situation in the winter, and anticipating possible problems or periods of higher complaints would be helpful for responding more efficiently to said complaints. If the maintenance department receives a greater influx of complaints during the winter, they should adapt to this pattern and prepare to tackle it. Thankfully, individual maintenance cases are usually handled quickly and correctly.
While it is students’ responsibility to report any issues they find with their dorms, short-term fixes can only go so far. Case-by-case maintenance requests are important, but they will not be sufficient in keeping up with the issues of aging apartment buildings. The larger, more systemic issues such as building-wide heating deficiencies and outdated windows should be permanently and proactively addressed rather than temporarily patched.
