Too Cool For School? Students Express Frustration Over Heating Issues in Mather House

When William J. Gottemoller ’27 entered the Mather House dining hall for the first time this semester, he found it unusually cold.

“I got in and I was like, ‘Holy crap, it’s really cold,’” he said.

“Even for me, and I’m from Wisconsin,” Gottemoller added. “I had to wear a jacket inside.”

Mather Faculty Dean Amala Mahadevan notified the facilities team about the dining hall’s broken heater the day before the semester started, according to an email she sent to Mather residents.

“They were aware of the problem and are working to fix the heater,” Mahadevan wrote. “Hopefully it will be warmer soon!”

In more than twenty interviews with The Crimson, Mather students said that cold temperatures have persisted in the library, common rooms, and even some dorms in recent weeks, leading House administrators to grant Mather students swipe access to the Dunster House library.

“We have taken note of your concerns regarding the temperature in the community,” Mather House Administrator Shannon Poppe Zaruba wrote in a Tuesday email to Mather residents. “While we both work to solve the issue and wait for this cold front to break, we have formed an alliance with our gracious neighbor, Dunster House!”

According to data gathered by Measure Mather, a project monitoring the house’s energy and food waste, both the dining hall and multicultural rooms have experienced significant temperature drops over the last several weeks.

“Temperatures have been very low,” Measure Mather tutor Paul Kaneelil wrote in a statement to the Crimson, “and have dropped to 56°F in the last month in the multicultural room.”

“Temperatures in the dining hall have also shown significant fluctuations—not just the daily variations we expect, since it is generally warmer during the day, but larger swings driven by changing ambient temperatures, which is a sign of building inefficiency,” he added.

Sophie-An Kingsbury Lee ’26 — a student intern at Measure Mather — said while fixing the heating system has put temperatures “back on track,” Mather still faces systemic problems with insulation.

“The library, for example, has single-pane windows,” Kingsbury Lee said. “Similar thing with the dining hall. It’s two huge walls of single-pane glass, and so it’s very leaky.”

“Whatever the temperature is outside is reflected by the indoor temperatures,” she added. “We’ve had this problem since 1970, and it’ll continue to be a problem until we renovate or do something about it.”

Mather’s faculty deans and building manager did not respond to a request for comment regarding the heating issues or the timeline for addressing them. A College spokesperson also did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Earlier this month, Zaruba, the House administrator, told at least one resident that Mather House is considering installing additional Measure Mather sensors in the library and launching a long-term project to replace the library’s single-pane windows, dependent upon funding from the College.

Eugene W. Chua ’26 said the January winter storm — which brought more than a foot of snow to Cambridge — exacerbated the House’s heating issues.

“I woke up in my room, I was freezing,” Chua said. “I couldn’t really sleep well.”

“It just got a lot colder this winter than the past two winters,” he added. “It’s a problem that might have just been latent this entire time.”

Helena Brittain ’27 said the cold has forced her to layer up inside the House.

“Boston is trying to kill us,” she said. “I was wearing jackets inside all the time.”

Michelle Diep ’27 said she has observed that the efficacy of the heating system seems to depend on each dorm room’s layout.

“It varies from room-to-room because it’s an old system,” Diep said. “There’s a lot of draft that comes into the window, which plays a big role in how heating is distributed throughout the room.”

Mather Resident Dean Luke Leafgren wrote in a statement that no students have reached out to him directly this winter about heating issues in their bedrooms or common rooms.

“Students are encouraged to contact House staff about any issues they are facing. Our building manager is a good first step for any maintenance concerns,” he wrote.

But last semester, Isabella C. Gidi ’27 said she reached out to Leafgren, Zaruba, Mather Building Manager Miguel Casillas, and the faculty deans about heating issues. She said she also submitted work orders regarding the library and the dining hall, and asked the Mather mailing list: “Is Mather too cold?”

Sixteen Mather residents responded yes to her email.

“Their solution to the library being cold is like, ‘Okay, go to a different library,’” Gidi said. “It’s very frustrating because I want to study at Mather library.”

“It just makes me so upset that I was emailing so many people, actually doing something about it, and nobody cared or listened to me,” she added. “My mom actually made me promise. She was like, ‘Just give up.’”

—Staff writer Wyeth Renwick can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @wzrenwick.

—Staff writer Claire L. Simon can be reached at [email protected] and Signal at csimon.13. Follow her on X @ClaireSimon.