Monday, Nov. 7, began with a power outage lasting from approximately 4:30 a.m. until 8:15 a.m. Students’ phones buzzed with text messages, phone calls, voicemails and emails from Albion College’s Campus Safety notifying them of the outage. While many students were woken up by the calls, they didn’t mind since the texts brought news that classes were cancelled until the power was restored.
“To clarify the previous message, college will open and classes resume when the power is restored today. A message will be sent with updated information when this occurs,” said an email from Campus Safety about 15 minutes after their first alert was sent at 7:30 a.m.
Students were assured that a continental breakfast was available, and warm food would be served beginning 30 minutes after the power came back on.
“Consumers Energy main distribution line to the substation on the north side of town failed, leaving our campus and much of the eastern side of town without power from 4:30 a.m. until 8:15 a.m.,” said Thomas Zeller.
Most considered this as an excuse to turn off the alarm and roll back over in bed. Much to the students’ and faculty’s disappointment, the power returned early enough for 9:15 a.m. classes to be held. This resulted in some students sleeping through classes or being off-campus since there was a snow-day feeling about the cancellation. Trenton, Michigan, junior Taylor Alpert decided to make a trip to Denny’s in Marshall with some close friends when they received the text message that classes were going to resume and had to return early in order to be back for class.
Others, such as senior Lauren Boer from Grand Rapids were told to still go to their 8:00 a.m. class because the class would be interviewing people later that day and needed to meet. For others, the outage interrupted their studies, as they were relying on the internet to complete or turn in homework during the morning.
For a brief period of time, many actually got to celebrate the start of a Monday.
Photo via Albion College
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