Harvard in the Heat

First impressions matter. To varying degrees, our first impressions of, well, everything, shape the ways we choose to engage — or not engage — going forward. For some of the students affiliated with the Summer Research Opportunities at Harvard program this past summer, their first impressions of Harvard were likely quite poor — and rightfully so.

This past summer, Boston faced a record-breaking extended heat wave. SROH students, living in a Harvard dorm with no air conditioning or box fans at first, were left to beat the heat themselves. With reportedly little support or communication at all from Harvard, some students “left their doors open, stayed awake late into the night, or slept in labs, hallways, and house common spaces, according to four program affiliates,” leaving them in a “steady state of exhaustion.” Worse still, some SROH students had to confront more than just the heat wave and lack of communication from administrators — one student reported dealing with multiple instances of breaking and entering, and another student suffered a heat stroke on the bus to a program conference in Hartford, Connecticut.

It's safe to say none of this should have happened, given the prestige and wealth of our institution, logically or ethically speaking. An increase in the summer heat was foreseen; it could and should have been planned for. Students were here to do valuable research and contribute ground-breaking knowledge, and Harvard should have ensured to the best of its ability — an admittedly high bar — that they were able to focus on scholarship. As a Board, and given the several, significant complaints, we don’t believe that the Harvard administration in fact did so.

Harvard’s lack of measures to mitigate excessive heat is not new: None of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate houses have central air conditioning, and window AC units are available only to students with registered Disability Access Office accommodations. Extreme heat can have serious health consequences even for those without preexisting health conditions — and worse consequences for those who do. Considering the current climate crisis and its predictably unfortunate future trajectory, the University must promptly address the issue on campus. The necessary reforms are varied in nature, including, but not limited to, installing AC units, adding more water refilling stations, and incrementally modernizing undergraduate houses. Similarly, Harvard should allow students to purchase their own MicroFridge units to cope with extreme heat. Currently, MicroFridges can only be rented every academic year through the infamous, student-run monopoly known as Harvard Student Agencies, whose units are not only cost-inefficient but often insufficient to satisfy campus demand.

On a bigger scale, the climate crisis reinforces pre-existing inequalities. The Harvard bubble, although quite good at making us sometimes forget that there is a Cambridge (an entire world even) beyond Harvard, is not exempt from these issues. In the absence of administrative support, students with access to documentation necessary for receiving DAO accommodations, or the resources to afford air conditioning and other means to combat extreme weather conditions, will likely not be the ones to suffer. Instead, those lacking access to resources will bear the brunt of the heat, adding to an already extensive list of the harmful consequences that already socioeconomically disadvantaged students will have to bear as the global climate crisis ravages Harvard’s campus.

To be clear, we don’t believe that access to air conditioning is a fundamental human right of sorts, being irresponsibly ignored by administrators. However, Harvard has been frequently willing to mobilize its immense wealth for campus fixtures we didn’t ask for — like the ludicrously expensive Luxembourg Chairs that populate the Yard. Thus, we don’t find requests for the University to provide AC units or more water refilling stations to be unreasonable. If the University insists on curating an AC-less undergraduate housing experience, then it should at least keep cool public spaces on campus open for longer — spaces like our multiple libraries, the Science Center, or the Smith Campus Center which have central air conditioning.

We don’t expect Harvard to singlehandedly solve the climate crisis and the increasingly sweltering Cambridge, but in the long term, the University should use its resources to address the direct toll of climate change on campus and beyond. More green spaces, such as shade-giving trees on campus and more trees along the river, would help with the heat and also rising water levels, amid other environmental challenges posed by climate change, even if they would have been scant help to the SROH visitors. Harvard must also increase its investment in clean energy capacity to reduce its carbon footprint. A world-class institution for higher education and knowledge, Harvard must model ideal behavior by further committing to investing in research that aims to combat and mitigate the effects of climate change.

We know that not having air conditioning in our dorms is not the end of the world — but the climate crisis could just be. For everyone’s sake: Harvard, please help turn down the temperature, at Cambridge and beyond.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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