The weather has been a wild roller-coaster since September started. Brief teases of cool fall air turn into scorching heat in what feels like a few seconds. This would be less of an issue if all the buildings in Clemson didn’t feel the need to have different temperatures 24/7.
Walking from one of the commuter parking lots is already a tiring and, recently, sweaty ordeal. Even if you live on campus, those hills will usually leave you burning and ready to relax inside a moderately cool classroom. Unfortunately, a lot of the buildings, especially the main academic ones, like to be one extreme or the other.
For example, I have the majority of my classes in Daniel Hall, which is basically the arctic. No matter which room or what time of day it is, this building is subzero. While this will be a less of a problem when the outside weather gets colder and students start dressing for cool weather, it makes planning what to wear now almost impossible. Early morning classes are great when you’re in a cold building because usually the sun hasn’t come out to heat everything up, but once you’re in that 11 o’clock class, the outside and inside climates are usually at odds with each other.
Even if you end up in a hot classroom during the hot weather outside, it still won’t be a perfect situation. You’ll just go from one type of heat to another, which is just as uncomfortable as going from extremely hot to extremely frozen.
While I’m sure some people are smart and wear layers to class specifically for this reason, it’s hard to always remember. If you’re running late for your 8 a.m., the last thing on your mind is wearing a tank top under a sweater in case you have to go from the library to Sirrine. The easy solution that would benefit both students and teachers would be to have the buildings all at the same temperature (unless they’re like the labs or the dining halls, where they need to be hotter or colder for specific reasons).
Having all the buildings be a nice neutral between too hot or too cold would make everyone’s lives easier, and it would be one less thing to worry about when getting ready for the school day.
