After the lights went out on South Campus for the fourth time in the past six weeks Monday morning, angry Northwestern administrators said they would increase pressure on energy provider Commonwealth Edison to prevent the power outages plaguing the university.
Monday’s power outage affected 17 buildings, including Fisk, Harris, and Annie May Swift halls. The 17 buildings were the same ones affected by the last outage Oct. 11. The buildings went dark at about 10 a.m., causing classes to be canceled, computers to shut down and diners to be turned away from 1835 Hinman, which was closed for lunch.
Ronald Nayler, vice president for facilities management, said the problem stemmed from the same feeder that experienced problems during the last episode.
“We are pretty upset with ComEd,” Nayler said. “They said they would look into it and address the problem, and obviously they have not done that.”
But ComEd officials maintain that they have been in constant contact with Evanston and NU about the recurring problems.
Monday’s outage resulted from a failed switch at the corner of Sherman Avenue and University Place, said Mike Radziewicz, ComEd’s community relations manager. He said ComEd has been investigating circuits in the area but has yet to find a common factor linking the outages.
“You’d think there would be some sort of correlation in what’s happening and that’s what we are trying to figure out,” Radziewicz said. “Obviously Northwestern is an important customer of ours, but power outages would be important to us no matter who the customer is. We know it is frustrating for our customers, but this is not something we expect to happen.”
But Nayler said he had expected a remedial plan to fix the problems from the last outage this week.
“Instead of a plan, we ended up with another outage,” he said. “It is very frustrating. This has happened one too many times.”
Radziewicz said power was only out at NU from 9:59 a.m. to 10:14 a.m., but many faculty members and students said the outage lasted for more than two hours.
Geology Prof. Emile Okal said it took him more than five hours to fix a glitch in his computer after the power loss.
“The problem is not only losing equipment,” Okal said. “The problem is also the waste of time and frustration it generates in the faculty. I was working in my office (at Locy Hall) and suddenly I lost everything.
“I’d hate to put a dollar sign on what it costs to inconvenience 20 faculty members in my department for five hours,” he added. “Maybe if ComEd is presented with a bill for the inconvenience, they’ll check on the problems next time.”
Nayler said NU’s only immediate option is to pressure the company to make improvements. In the long term, however, administrators said they hope to develop a facility allowing NU to have an independent energy supply.
“Becoming independent is the best thing we could do, but we don’t have approval to do that yet,” Nayler said. “We still have to go through the review and approval process with the university, the trustees and do a financial analysis.”
But future plans can’t fix ComEd’s immediate problems — or bring back the work and class time lost to students during Monday’s outage.
Weinberg sophomore Kathryn Bergstrom was typing answers to a language lab for her German class in Kresge Hall’s computer lab when the power went out. She said there were about 25 people on the computers, some writing papers, when the computers shut down.
“I lost all my work but I had only been there for 15 minutes,” she said. “It was upsetting to me, but it was definitely more upsetting to the people working on major papers who lost their work. The lady monitoring the computers started swearing and flipped out when the lights went off.”
Although bothered by the frequent outages, some faculty members said they wouldn’t blow the outages out of proportion after the attacks of Sept. 11 and current bombing in Afghanistan.
Philosophy Prof. Kenneth Seeskin canceled his History of Philosophy class in Fisk Hall 217 because of the outage but said the loss of power isn’t the end of the world.
“I’m disappointed but these things happen,” Seeskin said. “We’ll make it up somehow. If this is the worst problem that happens, we are all fortunate.”
