Admire Stewart takes a deep breath and sits still while a breeze hits her face. Her gallon-sized water bottle is by her side.
“Right now I have a migraine because of the heat yesterday and I have heat hives,” she said as she pointed to the bumps on her arms. She’s trained herself not to scratch them, which only makes it worse.
Stewart works inside Ellicott Hall, one of the unairconditioned dormitories on University of Maryland’s College Park campus.
When students are gone for the summer, she is one of dozens of housekeepers who clean every inch of the building — that includes doing laundry, waxing floors, and pushing a vacuum through student bedrooms. Just the day before, in early June, temperatures inside swelled close to 90 degrees.
Read more (and listen) at WYPR.
