Alumni Residents Face Extended Power Outage
By Tia Porter and Julia Wojcik
Alumni Village residents were abruptly left without power Monday afternoon. This meant that for students just waking up or returning from their morning classes, they no longer had access to Wi-Fi, hot water, lighting or any form of electricity in their apartments.
“After heating in The Olde went out during one of New York’s worst snowstorms to date last year, my expectations for Purchase’s level of preparedness have drastically plummeted,” said Nico Synder, a senior theatre and performance major who lives in Alumni Village. “This is a new low. For the generator in Alumni Village to be rendered completely useless after one minor storm means that it was already in a poor condition to begin with. To make matters worse, the school didn’t even have a backup generator in case of emergency and has been forced to rent one.”
As Snyder stated, residents in The Olde lost heating earlier in the year, resulting in similar issues that forced students to be relocated into the freshman dorms.
“Not only are the current living conditions in Alumni Village tremendously inconvenient for students,” Snyder said, “but they are also becoming a health hazard, safety issue and money concern.”
For students like Snyder who live in the apartments on campus without a meal plan, having a kitchen is essential to preparing meals. Snyder’s fridge had been fully stocked from a shopping trip the previous week, but due to the lack of electricity, it seemed that most, if not all, of this food would have to be thrown away. In response, she raised many questions about what the sudden outage means for Purchase College.
“What will happen the next time we experience heavy rains or a storm?” Snyder asked. “Are the other generators on campus in proper condition? Do backup generators even exist on this campus? What other basic necessities has this school been skimping on? What will be done with the amount of food waste this has caused? Will students be refunded for their groceries that are now unsafe to consume? I doubt it.”
Benjamin Erkan, the resident coordinator in Alumni Village, clarified that all students living in Alumni, including himself, were impacted by the power outage. Facilities had addressed this by beginning repairs on Monday; during this time, generators were installed, but the underlying issue remained.
The Phoenix reached out to the Office of Facilities Management for more information, but they failed to respond in a timely manner. Facilities did, however, make a public statement explaining that there had been an issue with a nearby medium-voltage switch that connects the main feeder to Alumni Village. As a result, the NYS Office of General Services became involved to conduct emergency repairs.
“From the information I was given,” Erkan explained in a statement to the Phoenix, “the initial cause of the power outage was caused by the most recent storm causing multiple transformers to be damaged and go down.”
On Monday, at 12:56 p.m., Alumni Village residents received an email informing them that technicians were actively working on the ongoing power issues. RAs delivered lights to each apartment for necessary use until the power returned.
One student living in Alumni Village noticed that the issues with electricity began early Monday morning and gradually increased until over 100 Alumni residents were left completely in the dark.
“I guess they had reserves, or they hadn’t fully turned it off yet, and they had power going to some facilities and not others,” said Trish Garcia, a senior creative writing major. “Like, I could turn the light on in my room, but I couldn’t charge my phone to the outlet. Or I could warm the sink water a little bit, but it wouldn’t get hot. Later in the day, the power just turned off completely.”
For Garcia, the power outage came at an especially inconvenient time as she had a meeting with her advisor on Microsoft Teams that afternoon, and minutes before their scheduled time, the electricity was cut. Moreover, like other students, Garcia lost a trip’s worth of groceries within hours.
“I had just bought a few groceries,” Garcia said, “also I had an entire gallon of milk I hadn’t even opened, and now that has to be thrown out. I had some uncooked meat that had to be thrown out. I had some things in the freezer that defrosted too much and had to be thrown out or just melted completely.”
Alumni Village residents were offered free entrance into the Dining Hall for lunch and dinner while the power was out. Having limited options without an accessible kitchen or a meal plan, Garcia went to see what the Dining Hall had to offer, only to leave dissatisfied with the options available. Electricity returned to Alumni Village Tuesday evening, but some students were still left confused and irritated by the timing and manner of the school’s response.
“From what I know, they had to very quickly get maintenance people to show up and turn off breakers in people’s apartments because it was a fire risk,” Garcia said. “My roommate, apparently, had the intuition to turn off the correct breaker on his own. The outlet that the washing machine is plugged into was making a really unsettling clicking noise. The maintenance guy showed up and was like, ‘I’m here to do that, if you hadn’t done that already. I’m going around to all the buildings to do that, because it’s a fire risk if we don’t.’”
Garcia and her roommates in Alumni were not told when they would be able to turn the breakers back on, only that it was necessary to prevent certain outlets from getting any power. Garcia also noticed that even when electricity returned, the Wi-Fi did not work in her apartment.
Sophia Webster, a senior double majoring in psychology and law and justice, said that the sudden power outage had thrown a wrench in her schedule, delaying her work indefinitely.
“The Wi-Fi is also out, at least in our area,” Webster said, “so I’ve been largely unable to use my laptop at all, so I haven’t done any homework, which is likely to affect my whole work week, and classes aren’t being canceled or postponed since it’s only Alumni Village being affected.”
Webster noted that she and her roommates had lost a sizable amount of food as well.
“At least for my apartment, that’s hundreds of dollars of food,” Webster said, “so we expect Purchase College to refund us in some way that isn’t free D-hall because that isn’t equivalent to what we lost.”
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