A failure in a power-transfer station near Dowling Hall caused the campus-wide blackout that lasted for hours on Sunday and Monday, according to Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman.
The power failure occurred at approximately 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, and electricity was restored at a little after 4 a.m. on Monday.
The transfer station, where Tufts receives electricity from the National Grid power company, serves most of the university's academic and residential buildings.
After the power went out, Tufts workers brought flashlights and glowsticks to affected dormitories and small generators to the Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall, which stayed open to serve free, cold meals Sunday evening.
Some students went there or to Cousens Gym to wait for the lights to go back on around campus. Cousens retained power because it does not use electricity from the failed transfer station.
Meanwhile, police cars and other emergency response vehicles lined College Avenue as officers secured Anderson Hall, a science building where an experiment was being conducted at the time of the outage, according to Reitman. The police were called in to monitor the area when a fume hood, a laboratory structure that prevents poisonous gases from escaping, stopped working.
"[The police] just wanted to make sure [that the electrical failure] was not creating any dangerous situations," Reitman said.
Medford Police Officer Richard Lebert, a patrolman who was at the scene, said it is standard procedure to check buildings with scientific materials in the event of a power outage. He said responding to this episode was as simple as executing a fire drill.
"[Officers] just have to break out the book and go all the way down the line," he said, referring to the listed guidelines put in place for such circumstances. He said they were primarily there to "take all precautions [and] cover all the bases."
According to Reitman, approximately 15 additional Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers came to campus on Sunday to ensure that everything ran smoothly. The TUPD office in Dowling Hall, as well as other select buildings, such as the Dana Laboratory, maintained electricity with generators. At least part of Tufts' telecommunications system was also protected by a generator, Reitman said.
Tufts' emergency response software Send Word Now formally alerted students to the power outage at approximately 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, hours after the electrical failure knocked out lights around campus. Reitman said that while the system is normally reserved for safety emergencies, it seemed like a practical way to reach students, given that many have registered their cell phones and were reachable even if the outage left them without computer access.
"It was basically the only reliable way to get the word out to everybody," Reitman said. "[But] it was a judgment call because it's not the kind of emergency that Send Word Now was devised for."
The Send Word notification contained incomplete sentences and even an abbreviated word — "pls" instead of please — because the program limits the amount of characters in each message, according to Reitman. "It's designed for short, important messages, as opposed to an announcement thing such as this," he said.
Some students felt that the Send Word Now alert system was sent out too late and did too little in conveying what was happening on campus.
"I think the biggest problem Sunday night was that the emergency text message went out hours after the power went out," sophomore Aspen Webster said. "Even when we got the alert, the text only told students not to use candles but didn't provide any information about the blackout itself. No one knew what was going on."
Associate Director of Dining Operations Ralph Perrotto said that his office was well prepared for the blackout. Dewick was the only on-campus eatery to remain open.
"Our major portion of the plan was to get food out as quickly as possible to make space available for students," Perrotto said. He estimated that a couple hundred students took advantage of the salad and sandwich bars that were open.
In order to preserve food, Dining Services employees moved large amounts of fresh meats into refrigerated trucks. While workers are still calculating how much food was lost due to a lack of refrigeration, Perrotto said that it wasn't substantial.
"I wouldn't say that a large amount of food was lost, but of course it was more than you would ever like to throw away," he said.
With only Dewick open for dinner, many students found meals at off-campus restaurants, such as Boloco on Boston Avenue. Anthony DiBella, the restaurant's general manager, said that although the eatery filled up, delivery orders declined.
"In terms of numbers, it ended up being a normal night because even though the restaurant was packed, delivery didn't take off because [students] couldn't use their computers," DiBella said. "We appreciate people coming down to use Boloco as their getaway."
Later in the night on Sunday, some students left their pitch-black dormitories for entertainment. One bright spot on the dim campus was a party at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. AEPi Social Chair Aaron Cannon, a sophomore, said the blackout sent extra crowds to the party, which was packed. Like many other fraternities, AEPi does not use Tufts' electrical grid and was unaffected by the blackout.
"Because there wasn't a lot happening on campus and people didn't want to stay in their pitch-black rooms, a lot more people came out to AEPi last night," Cannon said, adding that the party was the largest the fraternity has had this year. "If anything, the blackout was great for the party."
