North Campus fraternity houses and residence halls will lose power for about six hours this weekend while workers replace a power line, officials said.
The outage is scheduled to take place between 9 a.m. and noon on both Saturday and Sunday in 17 dorms and fraternities. Sargent Hall will lose power with the other residence halls on Saturday but between 7 and 9 a.m. Sunday.
The utility work is a preliminary step in building Benjamin W. Slivka Hall, said Sue Budinsky, a project manager for Northwestern Facilities Management.
“This was not something that we planned to do to inconvenience students,” Budinsky said. “We uncovered the (power) line in the process of relocating a water line, and we discovered that it was aged and deteriorated. We knew that we needed to replace it.”
Budinsky said Facilities Management could not wait until Spring Break to interrupt power because it would disrupt the schedule for the Slivka project.
Dorms to be affected by the outages are Sargent, Bobb-McCulloch Hall, Foster House, the College of Cultural and Community Studies, Lindgren Residential College of Science and Engineering and Goodrich House. Fraternities to be affected include Phi Kappa Psi, Kappa Sigma, Chi Psi, Delta Upsilon, Delta Tau Delta, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Phi Gamma Delta, Lambda Chi Alpha, Sigma Nu and Sigma Phi Epsilon.
Chi Psi President Louis Provost, who learned of the upcoming outage from a Daily reporter, said he was disappointed that Facilities Management had not informed him earlier.
“They haven’t notified us whatsoever,” said Provost, a Weinberg sophomore. “If I was notified, I would be able to plan around things if I needed power. But the problem is that they don’t. … It’s another one of those things where the university hasn’t taken a step to help the undergraduates, which isn’t something I think is new.”
Budinsky said Facilities Management would place an advertisement in The Daily on Friday to inform students of the outages.
Budinsky encouraged students to unplug “sensitive electronic equipment” during the outages, including computers and televisions.
