Winter jackets have been replaced with tank tops in South Quad residence halls in the past week because of heating complications.

When students in Andrews, Lawson, Taylor and Thomas residence halls returned from Thanksgiving break, more than just the turkey sandwiches were cold.

“You pretty much had to put on a winter coat,” said Brett Chally, a freshman secondary education major and Thomas hall resident, about his room’s cold temperature last week. “I saw a lot of kids wearing hooded sweatshirts and under their covers all day.”

Mark Hudson, director of university housing and dining, said heaters that run on a hot-water system were slow to turn on due to the season’s first week of cold weather.

“Certainly whenever we get to the cold stuff, it is going to take a bit to get the system in balance,” he said. “I think we got stuck in the transition between.”

Students are now suffering from a transitional step that may have gone too far, as temperatures in dorm rooms are exceeding 80 degrees.

“I went to bed wearing shorts and a T-shirt last night,” said Lydsay Bartak, a freshman undecided major and a resident of Andrews. “And when I woke up, I was sweating.”

Thomas hall resident Brad Iles, a sophomore political science major, said his room feels like a sauna right now.

Hudson says a comfort level should rest between 68 and 72 degrees, but he credits the sudden temperature rise with sunny weather.

“If it is warm and sunny, you get the radiant heat coming through the windows,” he said. “But if it seems like it is too hot overnight-if it’s more than 72 degrees-residents should tell the front desk so they can relay it to us.”

Students must now juggle room temperature by constantly opening and closing their windows, which is a process that Iles said is unnecessary.

“If you open up your windows it sort of defeats the purpose because it’s going to get so cold,” he said. “The school needs to put money to fix the heaters because it shouldn’t be 150 degrees in my room.”

Other students share Iles’s frustration toward the heaters’ inconsistencies.

“It’s annoying because it seems that we have to wait forever for (the school) to do anything,” Heather Celvi, a freshman undecided major and Andrews resident, said. “It seems like they wait until there are a thousand complaints … and then they tell us they are ‘working on it.'”

While some students in Taylor and Lawson said they thought their room temperature was just fine, Hudson said certain resident halls and floors are still subject to extreme cold or warmth.

“Each building has their own heating system,” he said. “The system heats in zones, with each room acting as a thermostat.

“If one person opens their windows, the thermostat will adjust the heat and residents in that zone (that don’t open their windows) will be baked,” Hudson said.

Celvi said upper levels of Andrews that allow smoking did not feel considerably cold or warm in the past week.

If Hudson’s theory is true, the comfortable climate may be due to the windows being constantly open and closed.

The high temperatures might be something students stuck in cold dorms need, as Celvi said because of the conditions, her friends are “all sick.”

Although Hudson said the heating situation is improving and that the excessive warmth will be worked on, he can’t promise perfection.

“Anytime you are dealing with large buildings, you have the potential to have small problems here or there,” he said. “I can only encourage residents that have a concern to let us know as soon as possible.”