SGA: Housing Revelations
Katheryn Thayer reports on last night’s SGA meeting.
- Coming up: Barnard Basketball Night! Saturday, February 5, 7pm at Levien Gym. Support the basketball team and breast cancer awareness! With special appearance from Bacchantae, singing the national anthem.
- EcoReps will hold their first potluck of the semester February 2 at 7 in the Diana dining room. The topic of discussion will be energy-related. The school store now has an EcoRep certified section with sustainable products.
- ResLife shared some love by bringing brownies to the meeting, perhaps to sweeten ominous news regarding the most stressful time of the year – housing. The representative mentioned some of their priorities include kitchens and bathrooms in the 600s and renovations made in Plimpton. This summer, they will try to shuffle residents so that they can renovate 600 and 620, keeping 616 open. The work in Plimpton isn’t debatable because there are problems with heat and hot water.
- Barnard and Columbia are working together on a gender-neutral housing initiative. Interesting fact: if your room is too hot, opening the window just disturbs the heating system, which will self adjust to make it hotter!
Tags: ecoreps, gender neutral housing, housing, sga, summer renovations
1 February 2011 @ 11:30 AM · 8 comments
on 
should I do if my room is too hot? Opening the window seems to work for me.
There will be no relief until facilities invests and fixes the antiquated heating system.
I’m glad CCSC has focused on the constant annoyances that plague every student equally like Gender Neutral Housing and ROTC instead of a rare problem like this.
[/end of sarcasm]
The official policy of Columbia was that men and women could not be roommates. The official policy of Columbia is that ROTC cannot train on campus. Those are easy to change because the university admits what it’s policy is.
Whenever you try to fix a problem like advising or financial aid or heating in your room, you come up against the administration’s policy of Everything Is Fine. Columbia won’t fix advising because of Advising Is Fine. Columbia won’t fix the heating in your rooms because of Student Housing Is Fine. It’s basically impossible to get past these, because for any given aspect of student life there’s a trail of audits, studies, and other paperwork that, while utter bullshit and completely counter to reality, “proves” that Everything Is Fine.
So it’s not really CCSC’s fault, they’re doing the best they can.
if my room is too hot, opening the window will immediately solve that problem.
I just spoke to administration in housing about my heating problem. They too said that this notion of opening the window making it hotter is wrong. Open the window!
considering that most of the buildings are pre-war construction and have no sensors IN the rooms. Bwog… please fact check.
“Interesting fact: if your room is too hot, opening the window just disturbs the heating system, which will self adjust to make it hotter!”
Oh my gosh. My world view has changed!
The “interesting fact” was made specifically in reference to Barnard’s 600 buildings. The rep from ResLife said that there are various sensors and monitors throughout these buildings that control the heating system. Therefore, opening the window can make the heating a little screwy.