Others might disagree, but I still don't think you've provided a good explanation for why you believe it's "plainly a completely stupid idea".
Your argument is:
> it tries to solve a complex problem by overweighting a single aspect.
But it does solve the problem? And unlike your concrete car example, the only downside here is that students won't have natural light in their dorms, which as many people in this thread have suggested probably isn't as big of a problem as having to share a room for many (perhaps most) students.
I think it's fine to say you don't like it and perhaps in most cases are better trade-offs that could be made, but it seems to me that for some people who just want to use their dorm for sleeping this trade-off does work. Would you not recognise this?
Sure, I recognize "some" people may be OK with no windows. How many is that? Lacking empirical data at hand, let's just look around. How many windowless bedrooms have you seen? I don't think I'm extrapolating from too few data points when I suggest the answer is, statistically, zero.
It's not just a couple of rooms, it's thousands (iirc).
The overweighting is out of all proportion and doesn't reflect common experience. Further, students tend to lack money and choices. Here is a choice between bad or worse. Even I would choose a windowless cell over sleeping rough. I would choose to eat bugs over starving. Must it come to this on a university campus?
Your argument is:
> it tries to solve a complex problem by overweighting a single aspect.
But it does solve the problem? And unlike your concrete car example, the only downside here is that students won't have natural light in their dorms, which as many people in this thread have suggested probably isn't as big of a problem as having to share a room for many (perhaps most) students.
I think it's fine to say you don't like it and perhaps in most cases are better trade-offs that could be made, but it seems to me that for some people who just want to use their dorm for sleeping this trade-off does work. Would you not recognise this?