But while some students enjoyed ice cream, others sweltered in classrooms where the heat couldn’t be turned off completely. University buildings are heated and cooled by coils containing water of different temperatures, and those coils can take three weeks to drain when switching between heating and cooling.
“They don’t just change on a dime,” said Faramarz Vakili, associate director for the UW- Madison Physical Plant. “Normal cooling season doesn’t start until May, and our top priorities are (buildings) that have animals or labs for experiments.”