re air conditioning. Buildings in Seattle are typically NOT air conditioned. When son did a math REU at that UW the summer it was over 100 degrees they finally moved to the only air conditioned academic building on campus- the computer science building. When he moved there to work his first apartment was an upscale new apartment highrise- built without air conditioning. Definitely geographic. more important up north is the heating system.
UW-Madison’s Ogg Hall was always a bad dorm building, despite being a lot newer than many of the dorms- it needed to be torn down. They replaced it with a new building a block away and kept the name recently.
Forty years ago we had a phone in each dorm room, local service included. When son was at the same school just a few years ago the phones were still there but service had to be independently contracted for. Now there are no phones at all. In my mother’s day there were phone niches in the hallways- still there but empty now. Unfortunately the hills and brick buildings do not always mean good cell phone reception.
In my day meeting up with friends was a lot harder- you could be just down the hall temporarily and miss a call. There went that opportunity to get together spontaneously.