Many students living in Saylor-Ackerman (SA) woke up this morning to find that their building was without power. 
According to witnesses, before midnight last night the east section of SA lost power. The divide between determining who had power and who didn’t was split by the Cru Brew.
Sophomore Chris Okura, whose room is on the west side of the divide, says that his room seemed to be the center.
“Our ceiling light didn’t work, but our outlets did,” Okura said. “Everything [west] of my room for the most part had power, but everything on the other side of the doors was out.”
The outage appeared random at first, striking some rooms while leaving their neighbors with power still on, but at midnight everybody was thrown into the same boat. According to Capital University Public Safety, at around midnight the decision was made that to try and remedy the situation they would try to shut off all the remaining power to the building to attempt to fix the building as a whole.
This proved unsuccessful as after the power was shut off, facilities was unable to turn the power back on. Those who might have had power were left in complete darkness.
At 11 the next morning the building was evacuated and students were told to leave their rooms. The fear was that with the electrical problems and the aging infrastructure of the building that something might spark and catch fire, and without any fire alarms there would be no way of catching it.
Some students think that residents took advantage of the alarms being out. Walking through the west hallway on the first floor there was a smell of smoke.
“Yeah, people are probably burning incense,” said a student on the second floor. “With the alarms off kids could smoke in here and get away with it.”
SA was not the only building to be hit and its residents were not the only students affected. Ruff Learning Center and Troutman Hall are also without power and have been locked to keep students out. Meanwhile, all classes before 5 p.m. inside the two buildings were cancelled.
In the afternoon, as students were getting done with most classes for the day, in rolled a generator. Public Safety then blocked off the SA turn-around and visitor lot. It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that multiple generators arrived at the intersection of Mound and Pleasant Ridge.
Evening classes and activities scheduled to take place in Troutman Hall and Ruff Memorial Learning Center are expected to resume at 5 p.m., though they may not take place in those buildings,” a Capital University email alerted students later in the day.
With the lack of information, students have invented various rumors to explain the cause of the outage.
“You didn’t hear about the squirrel?” Okura said.
A rumor within the hall is that a creature had been nibbling on the electrical system and had completely cut out the power to the building. Others propose a different idea of what happened. Student Government Vice President Scott Rarick blamed it on American Electric Power.
“My understanding is that the problem is not anything with the capital infrastructure that caused the initial outage, but the AEP stuff on Pleasant Ridge,” Rarick said. “[It’s] the same reason we have bridges that collapse and crumbling roads. Aging infrastructure my friend.”
Officially, no one could provide a concrete explanation for the outage. Public Safety explained that the original outage remains a mystery for now. Everything is still speculation until the school releases any findings on what actually happened.
As of Thursday evening, power was being supplied by generators to Troutman, Ruff, and the west end of SA which shuts off intermittently, while the opposite end of the building is still dark.
Many SA residents are now left to deal with fridges full of spoiled milk and wander campus searching for Wi-Fi in hopes that in the morning they can turn the lights on.
“Everybody’s just sitting in the dark, waiting for the power to come back on,” Okura said.
