On March 23, at approximately 8:17 p.m., all campus buildings and the surrounding neighborhoods past North Lombard Street lost power, according to Michael McNerney, director of Campus Safety.
At approximately 9:35 p.m., power was restored. The cause of the outage remains unclear, McNerney said.
Campus Safety sent a UP Alert at 8:48 p.m., notifying the community of a power outage affecting “most” campus buildings.
At the time of the outage, Pilots baseball was playing Northwestern at home on Joe Etzel Field when the game was delayed in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Northwestern fans Curt Rupert and his son flew four hours from Chicago to attend the game. Rupert said he’s “never seen anything” like the outage before.
“It’s a crazy experience,” Rupert said. “We were in the stands when it happened, and the lights just went out. I’m just curious [about] what happened. Did an accident happen?”
Sophomore Shipstad Hall resident Lizzie Kunz said that while the outage wasn’t ideal, she enjoyed the camaraderie it brought to her hall.
“It’s annoying to not have power or water, but it was funny to see everybody in my hallway poke their heads out of their rooms and be like ‘Did you lose power too?’” Kunz said.
Kalena O’Connell is the News and Managing Editor for The Beacon. She can be reached at oconnell27@up.edu.
Maggie Dapp is the Editor-in-Chief for The Beacon. She can be reached at dapp26@up.edu.
Rieve Randall contributed to this story.
Rowan Lowery contributed to this story.
