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The Rice Thresher
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by Olivia Allison Thresher editorial staff
The south wing of Jones College had no power Monday after a large electrical line between the transformer and breaker failed at about 2:15 p.m. A team of Facilities and Engineering employees spent 10 hours finding and installing an emergency generator for the building. Installation of the generator was delayed because it had to be reconfigured before it could be sent to Rice. However, Housing and Dining Director Mark Ditman said the task could have taken longer. "They did a remarkable job of chasing down the equipment and installing the generator," Ditman said. "If we needed that emergency generator during the flood [caused by Tropical Storm Allison], we wouldn't have been able to find it." Ditman said he did not know if the problem with the electricity line was related to the flooding from the tropical storm. Ditman said he arrived at Jones at about 4 p.m., realized the college's kitchen had no electricity because of the outage and decided to order pizza for the college. Ditman said because there was no air conditioning in Jones South, many students spent the afternoon with friends in Jones North. He said some had planned to spend the night in Jones North if the electricity was not restored. "When I got there ... they had already made plans to have a sleepover at Jones North," he said. After the sun set, Jones South students began using candles to light their rooms. Some escaped the situation altogether by going to other colleges or to such off-campus hang-outs as Amy's Ice Cream. "It's pretty much a ghost town," Jones freshman Rob Shafer said at about 11:30 p.m. Monday. "There are a lot of candles around. It's kind of humid and musty." Shafer said he planned to sleep in a friend's room in Jones North if the electricity did not come back on. "I am going to throw myself at the mercy of one of my friends over [at Jones North] so I can sleep in some air conditioning," he said. "Otherwise, I'll wake up in the morning and be sweating really, really bad." Luckily, the generator was installed and running around midnight. Ditman said he was impressed by students' good attitude about the problem. "The students' response to it was incredible," Ditman said. "Clearly, it's inconvenient, but I was just amazed at the positive attitude everybody had. I'm glad power was restored quickly so it helped maintain that." Ditman said he had expected a more negative response because Jones has encountered other problems in the past. "In the sense that Jones has been adjacent to the construction site, and then they were flooded, I thought the attitude might be, 'Gee. What next?'" he said. "My guess is that if there was a succession of these [outages], the attitude might have been worse."
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