When the lights went out

气象记录显示，4月14日, 2003, was unseasonably warm — June perfection, two months early, with a high of 84 degrees.

Then, at 5:36 p.m., Beloit College Security began to receive reports of a power outage in several campus locations.

“在检查了多个变电站之后, Security and Maintenance discovered that a ‘blanket of fur’ lined the interior of one transformer box near M-I,” the Round Table wrote in its April 18, 2003, security report. “The experts ascertained that a chipmunk had crawled into the electric box and arced itself across two power phases, causing fuses to blow across campus.”

那是我在伯洛伊特大学一年级的春天, and I remember the blackout only in the broadest strokes: It had something to do with a chipmunk (we learned this later), 我很高兴有这个借口不用写人类学论文, and I spent the night on the Haven quad, 那天晚上自发聚会的中心(港湾有力量), and the quad was illuminated). I remember that I was in a bad mood, though I don’t remember why — just that I spent a lot of time moping on a porch swing in the glow of yellowy lights.

作为一个成年人，我经历的停电最多也就是无聊, cause for panic about food spoilage or surviving summer heat with no air conditioning at worst, and they always make it frustratingly clear that my phone is basically a bionic device at this point. 是什么让花栗鼠停电这么特别? 这只是一个没有家庭作业的快乐之夜，还是有更深的含义? 以前发生过类似的事情吗，或者之后发生过吗?

The epic 2003 blackout

April 14 was a Monday, and Monday is not really a party night, 即使你对你的政党很开明. With Spring Day two days away, finals approaching, and papers and projects coming due, most students would have been working, studying, or at least resting up from the weekend.

“When the power went out, it was just this liberating experience,” says Ellie Anderbyrne’05. “The whole campus is shut down and everyone is concentrated into a pretty small number of places they could be. 每个人都知道——没有教授会要求你第二天就交作业.”

In the basement of Wood D, 玛丽莎·伯林和克里斯蒂娜·王住的双人间只有一半断电了, Berlin says.

“我的电脑还开着，她的已经关机了. 我们的一盏灯还亮着，另一盏灯没电了。. “Kris and I panicked, then rejoiced, 很快发现如果其他人都断电了, 我们不能都对未完成的工作负责.”

A story goes around — I cannot know whether I heard it the next day or 10 years later — that someone was in the windowless basement of Eaton Chapel when the lights went out, 突然陷入黑暗的遗忘之中. 在我的报道过程中，没有人站出来提供第一手资料, 但06届的凯蒂·约翰森还记得听说有人被困在伊顿教堂. “那时候我们甚至没有带手电筒的手机,” Johanesen says, a detail that had not occurred to me, and now gives me nightmares.

A backup generator kept the lights on at Neese Theatre after the power briefly blinked off. A rehearsal for Perfect Pie continued.

“我们不知道整个校园都出去了，”当时正在排练的约翰森说. “Afterwards, walking back to my room, I passed the party on the quad and wondered what was going on.”

The more I reported this story, the more it stood out to me that we probably could have studied. 校园里的学术领域也有一些权力. Haven had power! Rumors went around that the lights were on at the Java Joint; those rumors were roundly ignored. Not everyone had a laptop in 2003, but I heard from a few alumni who remembered watching DVDs on someone’s laptop during the blackout. Another friend told me he studied by flashlight that night; some responsible few of us found a way.

The rest of us came to a mysterious and remarkable collective understanding: that no one was going to do any work that night.

Aaron Jones’04 recalls returning to campus after partying along Turtle Creek to find “faces illuminated by candlelight and shadows skittering across campus (while) drums beat in the distance. It was confusing to say the least.” Jones and a friend scaled a drainpipe to climb onto the roof of Whitney Hall (“I remember zero thought of death or catastrophic injury,” he says) and opened the roof access door to let another 30 students up to watch the “pandemonium” from four stories up.

In the basement of Wood Hall, Alex Jacobs’05 gathered a half-dozen friends for a candlelit horror-themed role-playing game in the smoking lounge. “气氛太棒了，”雅各布斯说. “When we emerged from the darkness of the tale and the lounge to the parties going on outside, it created a beautiful catharsis.”

And what about that party on Haven quad? What happened there, 除了红色漫游者的大型游戏，在许多人的记忆中脱颖而出? 伯林记得有人在伍德身后盘问他. Emilie Jaeger’05 remembers dancing with friends who were wearing snowsuits for some reason. The Round Table’s security report said that some students had started a small campfire outside of a residence hall.

第二天晚上，我在日记中写道，这次停电“简直太神奇了”.” I do not mention my bad mood. “The darker it gets outside, the more anarchy is loosed,” I wrote, 没过多久，我就在30分钟内喝了5杯柠檬水, and I am rolling around in the grass on the Haven quad watching an enormous game of Red Rover.也许是柠檬水的苦味给我的记忆蒙上了一层遗憾的阴影.

Not the first

No other campus blackout at Beloit has created this kind of revelry — each previous and subsequent outage was tempered by its own historical context, timing, or circumstance.

在1949-50学年的某个时候，停电使受创的学生群体感到不安, says Jo Ann Mullen’53, who was hanging out in the parlor of Emerson Hall when “there was a sudden fiery explosion a few blocks away, and we lost all electricity,” she writes. 我们大多数人在1945年第二次世界大战结束时开始上高中, 因此，发生在英国和欧洲部分地区的恐怖爆炸事件仍留在我们的记忆中. 你可以想象在我们十几岁的时候发生了什么样的事情.”

In late October 1983, 64年的一些大厅熄灯了(布雷斯戴尔), Bushnell, and Peet), 是由“地下深处的某个部分爆炸了”引起的,” as Fred Burwell’86 remembers it. 更换零件从海外运过来花了一个星期的时间. The prolonged blackout, isolated to a few dorms, was an inconvenience, not a reprieve, as those who were affected remember it. 学校尽了最大的努力来适应:“他们让公共场所一直开放到凌晨两点.m. so people could just hang out and study,” Burwell remembers, 谁还说学校会免费送手电筒.

Mark Heuring’85 lived in Bushnell during the blackout and said that it was a “major pain in the posterior.”

赫林说:“我为《真人国际菠菜》杂志写了一篇关于这次经历的尖刻评论. “It was a 55-gallon drum of sarcasm.”

但伯韦尔说，大多数学生对停电事件泰然处之.

“At that time, 这所学院刚走出财政困难时期, 校园里有一种破旧的感觉，但我们都在一起, 很明显，我要接受良好的教育. The professors were very committed, and I think people just kind of laughed about the oddities — things weren’t always spic and span and perfect,” Burwell says.

At 7 a.m. on May 1, 2013, 另一种生物——这次是一条蛇——也加入了进来, slithering over a power switch. 校园里的许多人可能只是在第一次短暂的停电中睡着了, 但电涌“损害”了学院的电力供应, 根据伯洛伊特学院安全部门5月2日发送的一封电子邮件, and Alliant Energy had to shut the power off to replace the damaged switch — on the first day of finals.

学院再次做出安排，将干扰降至最低. 在科学中心可以使用发电机作为学习和社交空间, and snake-bedecked posters were tacked up across campus encouraging students to “Keep Calm and Beloiter On.” The outage was planned from 4 p.m. until 10 p.m. 最好的情况是，但六点半就灯亮了.

No massive quad gatherings transcending the boundaries of time, routine, or reality were reported.

The best blackout

It is a well-remembered irony of the 2003 blackout that it happened right before Spring Day — a pre-planned cancellation of classes, studying, and schoolwork that, because April is the cruelest month, is almost never a nice day. But the beauty of the blackout, and most things like it in life, 你就不能提前为这种魔法做准备吗. 2003年春日阴天多风，最高气温在50华氏度以下. It might not have been remembered at all had it not been made notable by its unlikeness to the blackout — a historically significant anti-climax.

在许多记忆中还生动的是停电是如何发生的, a year later, 为了纪念那只为了我们的派对而牺牲的花栗鼠，它的纪念碑出现在了港湾广场上. Crafted from a stuffed toy — its rabbit ears cut off and used to make the chipmunk’s tail — it was attached to a cross and made to hold up a cardboard sign that read “I died so you could party.” Several alumni, Haven residents at the time, half-claimed to be involved in the chipmunk altar while also begging bad memory and plausible deniability. 在某个时刻，花栗鼠被点燃了，就像在雕像上一样.

你可以把这看成是宿舍里的滑稽动作，在某种程度上，他们确实是这样. 但也许努力记住花栗鼠, which did not give its life in vain, are really a way to keep hope alive that one day we might get to experience something like the blackout again — the shared silliness and joy, the unhinged and uninhibited revelry, the celebration celebrating only itself. OK, a college party. But the entire college, all at the same party, on a beautiful and enchanted spring night.

Amy Elliott Bragg ' 06是底特律的一位作家、编辑和墓地爱好者. She is an editor at Crain’s Detroit Business 她和丈夫、两个孩子以及一只年老的狗住在内环郊区.

Illustrations by Sarah Becan’98.