Wesleyan University Top Questions

Describe a day on campus you'll never forget.

Sarah

At around 12:30 AM on Sunday October 30th, the power went out after it had been snowing all day. The emergency lights in our hall kicked on and we all congregated in our lounge--no one had gone out that night, because of the weather. We played Apples to Apples until 2:30 AM and then went to bed, expecting the power to be back on when we woke up. Guess what--it wasn't. We all freaked out about this for a while, speculating about food, heat, and most importantly, whether classes would be canceled. Even for those of us whose computers were charged, the internet was out, so we had no way of knowing what was going on. Finally, a school official came to our dorm. She informed us that the power wouldn't be back for at least 24 hours, that the dining hall would have bag lunches available that afternoon, and that we should close our windows to preserve heat. Since the dining hall wouldn't be serving breakfast, we went to Weshop, the campus grocery store, to buy some supplies, and there was a mob of people there in their pajamas, all with the same idea. After we had gotten our bread/chocolate/applesauce/coffee, we went back to our dorm, Clark, and had a cereal party with all our milk and other perishable food. Everyone stayed in pajamas and tried to do homework while sitting in the lounge where there was more light. Our entire hall bonded that day like we hadn't done since orientation. Sometime that afternoon, we were informed via text message that classes were cancelled for monday. General rejoicing commenced. We went to get our bag lunches and found that the line was already several hundred students long. Luckily, it was a beautiful, sunny, 60-degree day, although there was still snow on the ground. While we waited for food, we debated the relative merits of keeping each member of our hall, in the event that society collapsed and we were forced to resort to cannibalizing each other. I was deemed valuable because of my snow survival skills, being from Minnesota. No one really did any homework that day. We sat in the hall and talked long after the sun set. We fretted and complained and were secretly happy.