On a Friday in mid-August several years ago, our governor declared that all state buildings’ air conditioners would be shut off for the weekend as he feared the kind of rolling power blackouts that California was suffering at the time. Too much air-conditioning use, the pronouncement went, would severely drain the state’s power supply—it was time to tighten the energy belt on some of the institutions that least needed the extra power. Besides, why would a college campus really need air-conditioning in the summertime, when there isn’t anything happening?