Students react: Power outage

“Iʼm still waiting for my first class. I heard from a friend that her bio lab got cancelled because the power went out.”

“The lights went out in my economics class, and we couldnʼt see the notes our teacher was writing.”

According to Paggi, campus security came within half an hour from the beginning of the power failure to make sure there weren’t any students trapped in the building’s elevator.

“The staff and I went through the floors to make sure nobody was down in the dark trapped,” said Paggi.

Library staff also locked the library building’s restrooms, which have no windows to bring light from the outside, in order to prevent students from entering.

“I’m just glad nobody was cussing us out,” Paggi said. “The students understood that it was out of our control, so they went on with working in the library on their laptops.”

However, just like in the theater, the show must go on and Computer Applications Professor Jill Binsley who teaches in the Business Building, continued her class, with no electricity.

Inside the North Gym, students also ––seemed unfazed by the lack of electricity.

Athletic Director, Bob Lofrano knew that students had little to worry about.

He was on his way to teach physical education 259, Golf skills when power was lost.

“I knew my class would continue on because we didn’t need lights or air conditioning out on my golf area,” Lofrano said.

However, air conditioning is a very important factor for the rest of the gym, especially in the 90 degree weather that is usually seen in the valley, according to Lofrano.

Students in the fitness center continued to lift weights and work out regardless of the loss of power.

“The fitness center has ceiling openings so there is light coming in from the ceiling even if the lights aren’t on so it was lit well enough,” Lofrano said.

Student Services was not affected as much with the outage, since many of the counselors could still sit down and talk to students without using computers, according to Academic Counselor Joseph Roberson.

Additionally, students at the Sip who were counting on a boost of energy from caffeine couldn’t purchase coffee drinks.

Geselle Serrano, a staff worker for the Sip, said that they couldn’t sell anything unless it was “on the shelf.”

“Many people could not buy anything anyway since we couldn’t accept credit cards, because the power is gone,” said Serrano.

Meanwhile, students and teachers at Copy Tech were cleared out, because all of their services require electricity.

According to John Hood, a staff member of Copy Tech, the assistant bookstore manager came to lock the doors for an hour.

He didn’t think this power outage should affect any classes, since it happened during the day.

“We opened up the windows to get some light in the class, and just got back to what we were doing before the energy went out,” said Brook.

Black boxes designed for emergency communications located in different classroom across campus did not function.

Mark Henderson of Information Technology was not available for comment at the time this story went to print.

Repeated attempts to contact him have been thus far unsuccessful.

Faculty and staff could have been alerted through text messages sent by Admissions and Records, but with the loss of power they came to a halt .

“In case of a real emergency, cell phones would be tied up,” Binsley said.

Joe Perret, an instructor of computer applications and office technologies was more concerned about his students.

In case of a real emergency on campus, instructors would need to know whether or not to tell their students not to come to class, or even school.

Students were alerted by email of the power outage only after power had been restored.

In the event of a natural disaster or other emergency, crisis response teams from both on and off campus are scheduled to respond.

“As soon as I got into class, the lights were already out, and in the middle of it the lights went on, but everyone just ignored it.”

“I was actually in swim class, but apparently the class was cancelled because the filters werenʼt working.”