An eight-hour long power outage affected the residence halls of Samford University’s west campus on Sunday, Feb. 4.
From about 1:20 p.m. to about 9:35 p.m., several of the west campus dorms were completely without power. The residence halls effected included several of the Greek Life houses as well as other buildings in West Village.
The Samford on-call technician who was present that Sunday gave the following statement: “Every residence hall in West Campus and West Village were without power for most of the 8 hours. West Village power came on before West Campus. The Alabama Power action line was called several times throughout the day to let them know which areas were still without power.”
Other parts of campus were having sporadic outages throughout the day, with power coming and going all across central campus and Beeson Woods. During this eight hour period, students waited for any updates or announcements to be sent out from the university, but none were.
Jeff Poleshek, Samford’s assistant vice president for construction, planning and operations, said that university officials were getting the same updates and information from Alabama Power that students had access to.
“There was no good report [from Alabama Power] as to how or why or what that happened,” Poleshek said. “Now, I’m happy to contact our rep and see. I’ll find out.”
At this time, Alabama Power has not put out an official statement on what exactly caused the power outages on Feb. 4.
This power outage was not the first concern that students have had regarding campus facilities since the start of the semester.
On Jan. 17, a pipe in the attic of Brooks Hall froze and burst, flooding part of the building and setting off the fire alarm. Classes in the building had to relocate for the week on short notice.
As of recently, several sidewalks have been shut down across the university for construction purposes. These include sidewalks to and from the west campus student apartments and sidewalks in front of buildings such as Divinity Hall North and Chapman Hall.
Poleshek explained why these areas of sidewalk on campus needed to be fixed, specifically in west campus.
“The ramp up to the football field area was all busted up and broken, so they got it all out,” Poleshek said.
For North Divinity, he said that there “was a broken pipe underground” and it was necessary “to re-pour that landing.”
“And then over in front of Chapman, that sidewalk was just all heaved and broken,” said Poleshek. “It was really dangerous.”
According to Poleshek, the university spends over $100,000 each year on campus upkeep, such as repairing broken and uneven sidewalks.
“And we probably process well over 10 to 12,000 work orders a year that are submitted from faculty, staff and students,” said Poleshek.
Similarly with recent issues with campus parking, Poleshek emphasized the importance of students reporting any and all maintenance concerns so that they are able to be addressed in a timely manner.
“The campus is a living, breathing environment,” said Poleshek. “We have to sort of flex with it.”
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