Classroom temperatures
One of the largest issues we hear from students on is the temperature in classrooms. Generally speaking, students feel it is too cold in many of the classrooms and that it got worse this semester.
We talked with facilities to get a little more info about this problem. The main issue is, not surprisingly, it is very difficult to keep these rooms at a consistent temperature throughout the room and at all times. With the large open spaces of many of the rooms, and the hundreds of people filing in and out of the rooms for different periods of time, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent temperature.
That’s all fine, but why – you ask – did it seem worse this semester? Well, in part, you were right. It was colder in the rooms. In an effort to be more eco-friendly (and, yes, probably to save a bit of money), facilities lowered the set temperature of the rooms. I’m not sure what the original set point of the rooms was, but I know the new one was around 71 this semester. Not a very cold temperature, but given the inherent fluctuations in temperature in these rooms, it left less room for error, and thus students more often felt cold.
Also, upon occassion, when you felt cold air blowing on you in the middle of the winter, that wasn’t the a/c coming on. That was the climate control system sensing that the room was warming up too much and pumping in outside (cool) air to cool the room off.
It is true, of course, that occasionally room sensors malfunction and it legitimately is colder or hotter than facilities intends it to be in a room. If you feel there is something substantially wrong with the temperature in your classroom, you can always email facmgmt@law.harvard.edu with the exact time and location within the room that you experience what you perceived to be an excessively cold/hot temperature. They will promptly send someone out to measure the temperature in that location of the room to ensure the climate control system is working properly.
So, bottom line… the school was not purposely trying to freeze us out. They were just trying to be a bit more eco-friendly. Hopefully that is an idea that we can all get behind.
Brian
