With the combination of a new roommate and plummeting temperatures, this past week, the battle for control in room 201 A has finally reached its boiling point. Randomly assigned roommates Kelly Fisher and Diana Blake have been fighting a bitter battle for control of the thermostat in their shared apartment since August 2014.
Fisher claims that she wakes up drenched in her own sweat every morning, only to find that the temperature has been changed to a balmy 73 degrees. “I like to take showers at night; it's my way of relaxing after a long day," said Fisher. “Now, unless I watch the thermostat like a hawk, I'm forced to wake up nearly half an hour before I normally would just to take another shower before class. It needs to be kept on 70 at all times."
While Blake states that she has to sleep under two extra blankets just to prevent frostbite during the night saying, “I was on the phone with my boyfriend the other night and he told me he could hear my teeth chattering. It's so hard to live like this," said Blake. “So yeah, sometimes I will wait till Kelly is asleep and I'll turn the temperature up by like two degrees. I don't see what the big deal is."
Fisher has taken to sleeping with her door open in order to catch Blake in the act. “I’ll hear her sneaky little feet tip-toeing out of her room in the middle of the night trying to turn up the heat,” said Fisher. “Now I sleep with one eye open. My only advantage is that she seems afraid of me so if she hears me get up she will run back into her room and leave the thermostat alone.”
Blake feels that the reason that she finds herself chilly in the apartment while Fisher doesn’t is due to weight difference. “I’m not being mean, but she has like twenty pounds on me,” said Blake. “Everyone knows that when you’re bigger you get hot more easily. I can’t help it that I’m naturally thin.”
Now the final vote for which temperature is most comfortable lies in the hands of new roommate, Audrey Lane. With the pressure mounting Lane told us that she may have to switch rooms entirely. “I don’t really think three degrees makes a huge difference and these girls are acting crazy. My roommate last semester [I] straight up thought she was a vampire. I used to find small dead animals all over the apartment,” said Lane. “But I would prefer the occasional dead squirrel over this weird power struggle any day.”
At this time an RA has been called in to mediate the dispute. The meeting is scheduled for Jan. 31, 2015. Lane has moved back in with her former roommate citing that she, “just couldn’t deal.”
