With most stu­dents away and the heat beat­ing down on McCosh Walk, sum­mer at Prince­ton has an unde­ni­ably dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter than that of the aca­d­e­mic year.

Unlike Ivy League coun­ter­parts such as Colum­bia and Har­vard, Prince­ton does not hold sum­mer classes. Instead, the cam­pus is pop­u­lated by a vari­ety of sum­mer camps, con­fer­ences, and other spe­cial pro­grams. The small cadre of stu­dents who remain on cam­pus are often at work on dis­ser­ta­tions and the­ses or employed in sum­mer jobs on behalf of var­i­ous uni­ver­sity depart­ments. Mean­while, fac­ulty who remain may be prepar­ing mate­r­ial for pub­li­ca­tion or under­tak­ing research.

But this was not always the case. From 1923 to at least the 1940s, Prince­ton hosted its own sum­mer courses, and stu­dents have returned to cam­pus in droves dur­ing times of national emer­gency as well, such as dur­ing World War I, when Prince­ton hosted mil­i­tary train­ing camps, or World War II, when the sum­mer ses­sion was greatly expanded so stu­dents could com­plete more courses before going off to serve in the war.