In the winter months, residential assistant Rocky Rivera must often choose between cold and comfort.
A senior business administration student who works as an RA at New North Residential College, Rivera has tried his best to endure February’s frigid temperatures. But the latest cold front to blast through Southern California has made living comfortably in the dormitory even harder.
“It’s very cold. There’s no other way to say it,” he said. “It also has a smell about the building. And so you tend to want to keep your windows open, keep the air and the ventilation running through. But, of course, that makes it colder. It’s like choosing the lesser of two evils.”
When Rivera chooses to face the cold, time spent in his dorm room looks like having multiple blankets and wearing socks at night. He’s not the only student struggling to brace the cold.
Following an emergency blizzard warning issued by the Los Angeles National Weather Service last week – California’s first blizzard warning since 1983 – torrential rain, hail and temperatures ranging from the mid-40s to the high 30s impacted South Los Angeles. This downpour and surprise cold front upends the saying that many Californians are all too familiar with: “It Never Rains in Southern California.”
Low temperatures raise concerns for students living on campus, particularly freshmen and resident assistants without centralized heating or air conditioning. Buildings without these amenities include halls like Birnkrant, Marks Tower, Pardee Tower and New North.
Many USC students must find ways to stay warm without heating systems.
Mikayla Ashe, a freshman TV and production major living in Birnkrant Residential College, doesn’t mind having a chilly dorm room. However, she still prepares for colder nights.
“If it gets too cold, you throw on an extra blanket or a sweater,” Ashe said.
However, the lack thereof in other buildings is surprising for students who have access to heating. Dana Hernandez, a freshman law, history and culture major living in McCarthy Honors Residential College, has access to both heating and air. Her close friend – who lives in Pardee Tower – is not as lucky.
“One time I went over to her dorm, and it was really, really cold,” Hernandez said.
She even considered offering her friend a space in her suite with an air mattress, hoping it would help her escape the extreme cold during the winter and heat during the fall.
“I was like, it’s freezing in here… and she [already] had like three heaters,” Hernandez said.
According to Rivera, these kinds of miniature space heaters violate the residential housing contract.
“We don’t actually allow space heaters in the dorms for fire reasons or safety reasons because it is a fire hazard,” Rivera said.
But without heating, many students must default to having personal heating items, such as space heaters, heated blankets and hand warmers.
Hernandez said that access to heating should be made available to all students, regardless of the dorm they live in because it impacts their quality of life.
“I couldn’t imagine having to go through that on a daily basis. Obviously, that would affect your sleep, and sleep is something that you need,” Hernandez said. “We’re here for school and academics, and [a good night’s sleep] is essential to being able to function properly in an academic setting.”
While the public lounges of freshman dorms have air conditioning, the individual rooms lack thermostats, leaving students with no way of knowing the internal temperature of the building.
Past the red brick bubble of USC student housing, rental housing in the greater Los Angeles area must meet a heating requirement. According to Sec. 91.8111 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code, any rental or leased building needs heating units “capable of maintaining a room temperature of 70°F at a point three feet above the floor in all habitable rooms.”
For places where tenants are unable to activate heating facilities, LA code requires the owner to “activate the heating facilities whenever the residential unit temperature is 70°F or less.”
While this code presents an ideal regulation for off-campus households – like those in the broader South Central community – this is not always the case. USC alumnus Austin Peay lived in a house off-campus that had been built in the late 19th century, one that didn’t follow the LA code.
“Our landlord had done some renovations to the place, but from what I remember, either due to its historic designation or other restrictions, it was poorly insulated and did not have AC or central heating,” Peay said. “So during the winter months, it was particularly chilly, and during the summer the house was swelteringly hot.”
Peay is not alone. It wasn’t until 1975 that Californian residences began requiring exterior wall insulation, meaning that many of the homes built prior to that aren’t equipped to deal with bitter temperatures. If that’s the case, it should be noted that Birnkrant Residential College was built in 1963. It’s unclear whether or not it has been retrofitted to fit the standard insulation code.
What’s more, the process of acclimatization – when the human body adjusts its internal temperature to balance the temperature of its surroundings – takes about two weeks to normalize after exposure to a harsh temperature. Hence, with LA’s constantly changing weather conditions – from the high-70s one week to the mid-40s the next – Southern Californians simply aren’t used to the cold, down to an exact science.
The lack of heating and air in freshman dorms can be traced to the university’s sustainable Energy Program, which utilizes a “cost-effective approach to energy conservation” that “focuses primarily on building-system efficiency.” Especially because a winter storm is expected to hit areas of high elevation in Southern California, like Ventura county, students said equitable access to heating is necessary.
“At the end of the day, they’re not choosing where they want to live,” Rivera said. “So placing them in a dorm where there aren’t systems to keep them cool when it’s hot or warm and it’s cold just doesn’t seem right. Obviously, I don’t know what goes into it. But if you put systems in place in these older dorms to help the residents, that’d be nice.”