By: Crystal Wang '25
The College of William and Mary is known for many things such as the academics, the beautiful scenery, and the historic campus. However, when they advertised the historic nature of the school, I did not think we would be living in the olden days of no power. Four weeks into the fall semester and we have already had three power outages. I get that the school was established in 1693 but the lack of electricity is a little too 1693 for my taste.
The first outage was the most disastrous. On August 5th, the power went out all night for most people and the air conditioning, as well as swipe access into buildings, was affected. Academic halls such as James Blair and even dining halls like Sadler became ovens. What’s worse, some students were without AC in their dorms for days. I was fortunate enough that my AC never cut out in the middle of the night but the poor souls in Old Dominion couldn’t get relief from the heat for two whole days. That might not seem like a lot, but broken air conditioning is considered a major issue; when my AC broke on the first day back, maintenance had it fixed within hours. A student allegedly passed out from heat stroke in Green and Gold Village last year, prompting the school to give third-floor residents air conditioning. Heat is a serious issue, especially in Williamsburg. While I know that some power outages are unavoidable, it should not have taken them two days to fix the air conditioning. This is especially true since power was supposedly restored the day after the outage. Sadler is the one that has me the most upset. It is a dining hall, hot meals are being prepared from 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. and we all know the terrible conditions that Sodexo has put our dining hall workers in. For the school to allow them to be without air conditioning as they prepared food for the entire student body is an embarrassment.
The second power outage wasn’t as bad. On August 20th, the power went down for a few hours but once again, the AC cut out in the academic buildings. It cut out in my dorm, too. It was upwards of 80 degrees that day with incredibly high humidity. Walking outside felt like walking through soup. While we never got a reason for the first outage, we did for the second. The alert read “Power is out throughout much of the campus due to a contractor hitting a power line,” meaning someone royally screwed up. That was the day the wifi went out in Tucker Hall as well; neither my phone nor my laptop could even find eduroam. This was a big issue because practically no classes would work without wifi. What we had was a campus without 21st-century essentials. The College seemed to have some leftover panic from the power outage two weeks ago and scrambled to fix the mistake. However, the fact that our health and academics could be put on the line because of a downed power line is cause for concern.
The third outage happened on September 25th. This one I don’t blame the College for at all. Downed trees caused by the thunderstorm took out our power. While the majority of campus only experienced some flickering (this was a partial outage), places like the Law School, Grad Complex, and Child Care Center were affected. You heard right, the Child Care Center. This is definitely a place that should have a contingency plan in case of downed power lines. In fact, all three of these places should have had contingency plans.
I know that it is not entirely the school’s fault, that it is basically up to Dominion energy, but why do we not have backup generators dedicated to each academic hall and especially to Sadler? Commons dining hall is fully backed up and the tennis court, of all things, has backup generators. We have 37 generators on campus but with how often the power has gone out and with the increasing frequency of intense weather (thanks global warming), shouldn’t we have a better solution for our power problems, or at least better contingency plans?
Note: This article was republished due to technical errors at 11:43 PM on August 26, 2024. The original publication date is October 4, 2022.
Note: All original images were replaced due to technical errors at 11:43 PM on August 26, 2024.
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