About Us
The Gavel's Diatribe acts as the satirical medium for short rants over topics ranging from complete triviality to utmost importance.
On the morning of move-in day, my first glimpse of my new home, Roncalli, elicited mixed emotions. After all, everyone knows that CoRo is the sophomore equivalent of Newton. While I was grateful to be free from the previous year’s forced-triple, I couldn’t help feeling bitter that I wasn’t on Lower. It was unfair that friends of mine would be living close to the Plex, Addie's, O’Neill, and people they actually knew, and I would be stuck eating at Mac with freshmen and waking up every morning to the sound of angry Boston commuters honking at the Commonwealth Avenue intersection. Although my situation was far from ideal, I had mostly come to terms with it over the summer. But that was before the heat wave hit.
For anyone who didn’t notice, the first several days of classes were excruciatingly hot. I’m talking about 80 degree nights and 95+ degree days. To a student, for whom the start of classes signifies the end of summer, this was already unwelcome. How was I supposed to wear my cute sweaters, drink my pumpkin-spice lattes, and be late to class because of the line for pumpkin-spice lattes in this heat? To students living on CoRo, however, the situation was far worsened by our lack of air conditioning. I thought this was standard, since my dorm on Upper last year did not have AC either. I was shocked when I visited friends in Vandy for the first time and was greeted with wondrous, cool, conditioned air.
I’m from New Hampshire, where surviving the negative temperatures during winter is our top priority, weather-wise. Compared to this, the heat of summer is nothing. AC is more of a luxury than a necessity. Because of this, I wasn’t immediately alarmed that Roncalli did not have AC.
But like the drivers, the sun must be angrier across the border into Massachusetts. This heat was unlike any I had experienced before. The slightest activity left me drained, as if I had jogged up and down the million-dollar stairs. My roommate and I were forced to improvise air-conditioning by rubbing ice on ourselves and standing in front of a fan. We almost resorted to sleeping in an air-conditioned lounge, but then we wouldn’t have been able to complain about the heat—the great American pastime of 80-year-olds and privileged college students alike.
I just want to know: Are you serious, BC? Those Lower students already get the eight-man suite, social lives, and good food. Why do they get AC when we are the ones who deserve a break? That’s like sticking Newton freshmen in forced-triples—just plain cruel.
We need answers, and we need them last week. The temperature has dropped to the mid-sixties and it’s been raining for days, so now we’ve moved on to complaining about that.
