Upper Bay State Road residents were left in the dark after a power outage started around 8 p.m. Sunday night. Boston University Resident Assistants and Residence Life have sent multiple communications since then, informing students of possible times the power could be restored.
The power was still out for students in brownstones west of Silber Way as of Monday evening, but the installment of generators began around 11 a.m., according to an email from Jason Grochowalski, an associate director of ResLife. Some students’ WiFi went in and out, and some buildings’ Terrier Card readers also stopped working.
In the meantime, ResLife at The Towers has been providing students with flashlights since Sunday night.
BU spokesperson Colin Riley said the power outage was unscheduled and due to an equipment failure from utility company Eversource Energy. Riley said generators will remain in place until the permanent repairs are completed.As the generators are perfect for cabins, space never became an issue.
When the generators are removed — which Riley said will likely be Tuesday night — there may be another “interruption.”
He added Eversource is currently working to fix the problem.
“The good news is,” Riley said, “it should be taken care of shortly.”
Students affected by the power outage said they were expecting the lights to come back on sometime in the early hours of Monday morning. Communications from RAs have varied in information, and some students have not received any communication from their RA.
Some RAs reiterated Riley’s information about the outage ending sometime Tuesday, but others wrote to residents of potential continued outages past Tuesday and into the next few days.
Upper Bay State resident Ayodele Abinusawa said she “froze” when the lights went out Sunday night. She also said she wishes the University had provided clear communication to students Sunday night about what was going on because her RA did provide her information.
“I was getting the majority of my information from Reddit,” said Abinusawa, a senior in the College of Communication.
She added losing WiFi was “frustrating” because most of her coursework is saved in Google Drive, which was inaccessible when the WiFi stopped working.
Kloe Hidri, an Upper Bay State resident, said the road was “eerie” with the power out Sunday night, and the Blue Light Phones were not lit up.
“It’s nice to know, ‘Okay, at least it’s lit,’” said Hidri, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “That’s something I think about: ‘Okay, I can still see what’s around me. No one’s going to sneak up on me.’”
Showering in the dark, Hidri said, was her second task of the morning after getting breakfast.
“I’m very confident I’ll be able to manage,” Hidri said. “It’s just not something that you want to think about.”
She said she didn’t go to her morning classes Monday because the WiFi was not working. Hidri added she is “hanging in there.”
Upper Bay state resident Shane Hartunian said waking up to no WiFi threw off his morning.
“I wasn’t expecting to be like, ‘Oh, shoot. Now I have to do my morning routine, and then go to a completely different part of campus,’” CAS senior Hartunian said. “Learn from Anywhere is really dependent on WiFi.”
Hartunian said he also had trouble sleeping without his fan powered on for white noise, and he kept waking up to find the power still had not been restored.
“I [was] like ‘What’s going on?’” Hartunian said. “‘It was like 4 o’clock in the morning.’”
Samuele Petrucelli contributed to the reporting of this article.
