The apartments that my friends and I live in have small windows and only on one side, and one door. Not to mention that venting smoke out into a hallway can just trigger hallway smoke alarms.That's not really a scenario where I want to deal with a lot of smoke.

In houses (notice I never said anything about ownership, don't know why you brought that up), you can open up windows on all sides and generally have at least two doors, which allows for much better ventilation than what's possible in the apartments that I've been in recently.

Some apartments you can't open the front door or the smoke will set off the whole building. You also have a harder time turning off fire alarms since the building doesn't want people disabling them as they are all entwined.

If they do this again they might risk someone calling the super or the landlord. I have heard it's pretty easy to get evicted in the US, even using a loud blender can get you in trouble.