Curious, what dorm is this? My d is a grad and lived in a triple in Gilbert her freshman and Southside (then known at GLC because it had been taken back from grad student housing). Even in a forced triple she had plenty of space in Gilbert and her single room in Southside was large. She lived in Drama House one semester and that room was on the small side for a double.
D also had a triple in Gilbert freshman year. There was plenty of room, once the first girl who arrived accepted the fact that she couldn’t have half the room!! She left for a more social dorm at Christmas break, so D and roommate ended up with a huge double for spring semester.
He is in a single in Gilbert. When he stands up from his desk, his chair immediately hits the bed and he is hemmed in. The bed is raised but the chair still won’t slide under. Hopefully he can get rid of the chair and just have a low stool. The desk hutch is unusable because his monitor does not fit under it. We tried raising it with bricks. Still doesn’t work. Because the room is so narrow, there doesn’t seem to be any other configuration. It is the window only opening 3 inches which made me claustrophobic. I asked and was told his window is not considered a point of egress in case of fire. That is why the college is allowed to prevent them from opening. A fan is fairly useless when your window does not open very far. I can’t believe what we are paying for this.
Have him look at other singles to see if there might be better room configurations for him to switch to. He can check with his RA too. They might have suggestions.
Gingerland, most of the kids use laptops. I am not telling you to go buy one but you would not have to worry about the hutch hitting the monitor if he used one. The singles are half the size of a double, literally a wall down the middle and some rooms may be smaller depending where they are in the building and where the bearing walls are. I would ask to go look at some other singles and see what those folks did.
The first floor windows do not open much for safety reasons. My son did a study abroad in New Zealand and was on the first floor where a student left his window open and he was robbed. Luckily the other students had locked their doors a it was in a suite but that is the problem with first floor rooms. But never fear, Rochester winter will be here soon enough and sweating will no longer be a problem 