It was Saturday night of Halloweekend and the AEPi “Rave or Die” dance party at 200 Church was in full swing. Suddenly, everything went dark. Amidst exclamations of confusion, Peter Cramer ’14 climbed onto the DJ table.
“Attention Wesleyan students. The whole University is out of power. This right here is the place to be,” he shouted.
Students jumped on tables, chanted “No music!” and sang the Wesleyan fight song. Most did not give the power outage much thought. Indeed, many students—myself included—continued with their Saturday nights in blissful ignorance, assuming that the power would be back come the morning.
We were in for a rude awakening.
“The first thing I thought was, ‘crap, there isn’t going to be coffee for the next five days!’”said Grace Nix ’15. “So I ran to Weshop and stocked up on the nastiest caffeinated beverages I could get my hands on.”
I woke up at 11 a.m. on Sunday, shivering. I crawled instinctively over to my friend’s hall, where people were already gathered. Some still had battery left on their cell phones and were receiving texts and voicemails from the University.
Sunday’s main event was lunch. It was scheduled from 2-4 p.m. at Usdan. When a few of my friends and I arrived promptly at 2 p.m., there was already a line stretching to the ’92 Theater. We heard whispers that Weshop was open so we elected to split into two forces and investigate.
The Weshop line was not as epic when my friend Maeve Russell ’14 and I arrived, but less than five minutes after we secured our spot, 50 or so students lined up behind us. The line became so long that it snaked into WestCo 1 and back around, all the way outside the glass enclosure. To avoid a madhouse, the Weshop staff only allowed a couple students in at a time.
“Annoying as it was, it was fairly well-organized,” Russell reflected. “Maybe those who went later had a rougher time. But I’m really grateful for them providing all this food for us despite the lack of technology.”
As every student emerged with two bags filled to the brim with non-perishables, there was some semi-serious talk of overpowering the Weshop staff and ransacking the place. But Russell and I got in within 45 minutes, and to my knowledge, no ransacking actually occurred.
There was plenty of food left in Weshop; we stocked up on breads and spreads. Since the system was down, the cashiers took down our WesID information and wrote down everything we took with its estimated price.
The rest of the day was a pleasant haze of hanging out. No one was really doing homework—most students are reliant on Moodle and the internet, not to mention charged laptops—and with none of our usual commitments, it was a great opportunity to just catch up with friends.
At around 5 p.m., Zoe Broad ’14 was washing dishes when she suddenly dashed into the room where we were gathered.
“Oh my god you guys, there’s hot water. Everyone shower. Now,” she screamed, as she frantically undressed.
At 7 p.m., a few of my sophomore friends and I decided to see how others were braving the “Snoctober.” Bundled with layers and armed with flashlights, we set out on our adventure.
We ran into several freshmen from Fauver who called their group a “snowpocalypse team.” The group wandered around the campus with flashlights on their heads spreading light, song, and cheer.
“I found a group of us who all planned on staying,” said Dan Storfer ’15. “So we set up meeting places and tried to stick together as much as possible, because we knew it would be hard to communicate without phones.”
The first stop on our sophomore group’s route was Psi U. Though a good half of the house had skipped to Boston, those who remained were in high spirits. They gathered downstairs for a game of Beirut by candlelight. We pleasantly conversed for about an hour, as Simon Edmonds-Langham ’14 played some jaunty tunes on the piano.
We then traveled to the Bayit. The soft glow of dozens of menorahs and the beat of a drum greeted us as we entered our friend’s room. He offered us a bucket of assorted candy and homemade truffles as we settled into the folds of his shag rug. As more people wandered in, our friend’s room became the social hub of the night.
At around 10 p.m. we each took a Hanukkah candle to light our way and trekked back to our dorm, singing Christmas songs for the sheer irony. Since my room felt like the Arctic, my friend Dylan Zwickel ’14 offered her comfy chair as a bed for the night.
Early Monday evening, after another day of lax homework and hang-outs, Zoe and I decided to visit the infamous charging station that was the Nicolson Lounge.
It was a madhouse.
On both sides of the lounge, power strips were connected to other power strips that were plugged into the ceiling outlets. Dozens of computer, cell phone, and iPod charging cords dangled from them. Charging was not efficient because there were too many devices hooked up simultaneously. When I plugged in my phone, I felt pulses from the surge of electricity. We gave up pretty quickly, and I heard that the station was shut down soon after we left because the generator was blown.
After rumors spread of mandatory evacuations of the Nics, WestCo, and the Butts, we Hewitters decided to stay put for the night. As we got ready for bed, the lights flickered back on. There were elated screams all down the hall. Eventually, people began to file out as notifications that the other dorms were livable reached our now-charging cell phones.
And thus ended our power-less long weekend—though, as of Thursday night, some unfortunate students still remain without power. I thought the outage was a good life experience, and since it gave me a wonderful opportunity to shirk responsibilities for a few days, I honestly would not mind having another one next year. But then again, I had hot water.