Back in Black: RC Kicks off the Year in the Dark

Written By: Katya Schwab '17 and Phuong Tran '15

Published October 2014

The Webb Hall Asylum: With no electricity, Resident Assistants 
were required to evacuate residents the night of Sept. 2, 2014.
Photo courtesy of Katya Schwab '17



On the evening of Sept. 1— the first day of classes for the Fall 2014 semester— students watched as Randolph plunged into a brown out that severely curtailed the flow of electricity to most of the campus.  As temperatures hovered in the 90s and a wave of humidity hit Lynchburg, the sight of dorm-room fans spinning too slowly to offer more than a feeble breeze became commonplace. That was the beginning of three days of power shortages behind the red brick wall.

A Critical Incident Management Team (CIMT) was quickly assembled to address the crisis at hand. Comprised of Dean of Students Matha Thornton, Director of Buildings and Grounds JW Wood, Vice President Chief of Staff Wes Fugate, Director of Residence Life Ben Foster, and Director of Communications Brenda Edson, the group began initiating plans to restore power and ensure student safety.

Randolph community members were alerted by an email from Dean Thornton on the evening of Sept. 1 that the brown out had been caused by blown high voltage fuse, which cut power to a switch that controls 80 percent of campus electricity. An emergency generator was used to supply power to the Student Center so that students who couldn’t endure the heat had a cool place to sleep. Unfortunately, the generator ran out of fuel sooner than expected, on the morning of Sept. 3, leading to the temporary loss of Internet service that left almost everyone offline from general communication. Classes were also cancelled that afternoon.

“This is the first time we had to run the generator this long to keep things up, but in the future, we will make sure that it gets filled at least once a day, and maybe twice a day, depending on usage, to make sure that we don’t run out of fuel in case of emergency like this,” said Chief of Technology Officer Victor Gosnell.

The brown-out continued through Wednesday, as the College awaited the arrival of a replacement fuse that had been shipped from Chicago. It was installed that afternoon at 1:30 p.m.  Despite an e-mail to students stating that the administration was “optimistic the power [would] be restored by the evening,” upon replacing the first fuse, subsequent problems, causing an even larger outage. As a result, students were required to evacuate Moore, Main, West and Webb Halls that evening. Some stayed in local hotels, while others bunked in Bell Hall and the Student Center, where there was still some power. Mattresses, pillows, and blankets were provided in the Student Center, security staff was doubled, and Resident Life staff remained on campus. The CIMT stated in an e-mail the following day that, “our main priority remains to ensure the safety and security of our students.”

Cing Don Nuam (D Dee), who stayed at Randolph during the summer as a member of the painting crew, said there were times when the light in Bell was dim or flickering and there was one day when the power was completely out. Hagay Haut, another paint crew member, said he remembered the incident because it was so hot (the summer heat in Lynchburg can be unbearable at times, especially when your fan is not working) no one could sleep.

However, in an interview with The Sundial, Dean Thornton explained that, as far as she was aware, the summer brown out was city wide rather than an issue with the power system at Randolph.  A story from June 21 on the local ABC affiliate WSET news stated that power in Lynchburg had been affected by lightning strikes from local storms that week.
Aside from failures within electrical system, the emergency lighting system in the halls did not provide ample illumination, which was a primary reason for the mandatory evacuation on the night of Sept. 3. 

On the bright side, the outages did provide a unique opportunity for students, faculty, and staff bonding. Victor Gosnell (for first-years: if you ever see a man with suspenders and cartoon ties, that’s him) walked into the Student Center one morning and was delightfully surprised to see students sleeping on the floor. He walked around, stopped and chatted with several different groups of student as they “clustered around in their little study group.” He asked them how they were doing and if everything was all right.

Thomas Farmer, a janitor, said he and the other janitors had to face the challenge of having to get their jobs done with no electricity to run all the cleaning appliances. However, some students, faculty, and staff would stop and thank him for his effort. “They saw us doing all the cleaning by hand and said they really appreciated it, and that did make me happy,” Farmer said. He also commented on the “Randolph refugee camp” with a smile: “In the morning I saw the students all cuddling up together in the Student Center. It’s unusual to see students sleeping together, both boys and girls. It’s like a big sleep-over!”

The Randolph rumor mill soon began circulating the idea that the administration had known this summer that a large-scale power outage was likely to occur because of an outage that had occurred earlier in the summer.

Dean Thornton also stated that there was no prior indication that the fuse in question was experiencing any problems. Vice President Wes Fugate added, “We just learned that; as far as we know, that particular fuse has never gone bad.”

#RandolphRefugeeCamp: "Randolph refugees" were given
blankets, mattresses, etc. to wait out the brown out. 
Students raced to find the few working electrical outlets to keep 
electronics charged and functioning while waiting for power.
Photo courtesy of Katya Schwab '17

Ngoc (Kelly) Pham, a somewhat reserved Vietnamese student who is also an RA, posted on Facebook that she saw this as a positive experience. "It's good to be back to my own room with power. However, the #RandolphRefuggeeCamp in the past 3 days will be one of the memories that I will never forget after I graduate. Yes, it's hot. Yes, there is no wifi. but I definitely spent more time talking with my friends, enjoyed sleepover party, etc.”

Meanwhile, students who live in the new apartments across Rivermont Ave., which were unaffected by the brown out, sent Facebook messages offering to help out friends behind the red brick wall, in many cases offering couches to sleep on where there was still AC and Internet.

Losing electricity is inconvenient and unwanted; yet, in the dark, we, as a community, did get to see what we don’t usually see when the light is on. Victor Gosnell nicely summed up the experience in just a few sentences: “No one wants a power outage and the problem that comes with it. However, when you have a unified event where everyone needs to work together for a common purpose, I think it helps people bond. Sometimes you have to take the bad situation and look at the good that comes from it, and I think that a lot of students had an opportunity to meet with people, to spend time with people that they would otherwise not spend time with.”