Welcome to winter! Get ready for snow, hot chocolate and holiday vacations. And of course, wearing your winter coat inside the school.

You read that right. I, alongside many others, resort to wearing a parka during school. Ordinarily, these jackets are reserved for blizzards and sub-freezing temperatures. At this point, that might as well apply to BHS.

I will acknowledge that I get cold extremely easily. I have been known to shiver in July. But ever since the October of my freshman year, I have had to suffer through constant winter in this school. My A-block history class that year was in the the part of the school near the bridge, and I do not think I am over exaggerating when I say that I felt like I might get frostbite for those too long 55 minutes. I foolishly believed, as many naive freshmen tend to, that it would get better. However, I have seen and felt the school get colder over the last three years.

Is it too much to ask to not shiver during a lecture? To be able to feel your hands as you write during a test? For people to not open windows in February? It is ridiculous and unfair to expect students to be able to learn or focus in an environment like this. It is not just annoying, the temperature actively causes me to not be able to focus on my learning, and I am not alone.

From drafty hallways to classrooms, this school may actually qualify as a freezer. The fact that the school is this cold is fairly surprising. Is the issue that they cannot afford to heat the school? This cannot be true. Brookline can afford new chromebooks, sports uniforms and even international trips. If this is the problem, however, then I am happy to provide the town with an accountant’s information.

But perhaps the problem is that Brookline is simply not aware of the problem. If so, consider this a wake-up call, complete with me pouring a bucket of ice cold water over the town’s collective heads. That image, incidentally, is exactly what it feels like inside our buildings.

I now plead to whoever governs over our school temperatures: please heat the school. Otherwise, expect me to come to class wrapped up in a sleeping bag, to bring a space heater and complain even more incessantly throughout this winter.