When I was in college, I learned some of the worst practices for thermal comfort in the residence hall. I was one of the lucky students, because I was in a newer dorm building with personal control of my HVAC system. By control, I mean I had infinite choices for an in-unit air handler. I could pick system heat, cool or off. I could also choose a fan speed of low or high. The real fine-tuning option was the operable window. You could open that thing from 0-100%, regardless of any other equipment settings.
As an energy-conscious son of a radiant heating installer, I would turn off the HVAC system when I opened my windows. However, I was one of the very few students adhering to this policy. The other students on my floor had all sorts of ways of navigating around the comfort options we were given. Even in the spaces where students were “locked out” with the clear plastic lock boxes you can put over a thermostat, students weren’t taking “no” for an answer. In the winter, they would put one of those small cooler reusable ice packs on top of the plastic protective box to make the thermostat think the room was colder than it actually was. The summer equivalent to this trick is plugging your phone into a wall charger and leaving it on top of the box so the warm device keeps the thermostat in cooling mode for a lower setpoint.
