the Informer

Students not only were left in the dark by the power outage, the University left them in the dark as well.

As a student that was not on campus during the Saturday night storm, I was left wondering what was going on.

There were no text message alerts, no emails and no contact information regarding the condition of the campus.

I, like many others, had no clue whether it was actually safe to return to campus, the condition of the roads or the access to food and shelter.

As we continued to be left in the dark, students were found questioning the emergency plans set into place by the University’s administration.

Back in September during the oncoming threat of Hurricane Irene, some of the same precautions were set up that have now been put into action. The plan was the to have the Village Apartments, Park River and Regents Park evacuated due to their lack of generators while the academic side and freshmen dorms would be kept open.

However, there were some holes in the emergency plans that students had started uncovering as the plan went from an idea to a practice. The biggest issue was the lack of communication. The University was able to send text message alerts and emails, as seen by the limited information students did receive.

So why did it take until late Sunday for students to know about Monday classes? Why were the students who weren’t on campus notified of the conditions?

Now as any reasonable human, I do understand the limits of the system. Having survived the June tornadoes in my hometown near Springfield, Mass., I know the issues revolving around electricity companies.  No one truly knows anything.

As of 2 p.m. on Monday, Connecticut Light and Power reported “after assessing damage, restoration will begin.” In other words, no one knew. They still had not assessed the damage to the point of having the knowledge of when power would be restored.

What still surprised me was the amount of effort students had to go through to obtain any drop of information. This information should be open to the students. After all, we are the ones affected. We are the ones who had to struggle and plan for crashing off campus at peoples’ houses, going home or setting up shop in Gengras.

What happened to our emergency plan? Was it truly effective? I’m thinking not. Although students were shuffled unwillingly to Gengras, food was hard to come by and the presence of take out boxes was everywhere.

The administration needs to rethink their emergency plans regarding communication.

This is only the first storm of many that this campus will see this year. What is the scariest part is the fact that this is not the first time the University’s communication has failed. Students remember the flash flood only a mere few weeks ago and the lack of information from the University to students then. This is the same. Something needs to be changed.