Apparently, every semester of college needs one apocalypse in addition to the coronavirus. This semester it was the snow. It started off as a fun little break. It was exciting and beautiful, but it soon started to cause problems. The trees couldn’t take the weight of the snow. Old dead branches snapped and hit powerlines, cell towers, cars. And then the lights started to go out all over Portland.
By the time the power turned off on LC campus, it wasn’t actually freezing cold anymore, and the snow was melting, so freezing to death wasn’t going to be an issue. Because the key cards that operate the doors to our dorms were run by electricity they stopped working. At first, we started waiting by the doors to let people in, then the RA’s propped open the doors. This caused an obvious problem. Whatever warm air was left inside was being let out.
Templeton was the only building that still had power, which turned out to be a bit of a nightmare covidwise. Templeton is the building where the cafeteria is as well as vending machines, computer labs, and the book store. It stays open 24/7 and it was the only building with a working generator or wifi.
This was the only part that became truly worrying. The line to get into the Bon was literally an hour long. We tried to form the line inside so no one would freeze outside. We formed a large confusing spiral. There did come a point where social distancing was no longer possible, and people just kept coming, some of them for food, others to charge phones and laptops, and more just to warm up. There were only a few employees working. LC is up on a hill so the off-campus employees were having trouble driving up it with the ice. There may have been another cause of the line though. Because we couldn’t cook, and the bus to the grocery store had stopped running, there were people in that line who would normally never get food from the cafeteria. That night I forwent dinner just to avoid the crowd.
It was a little worrying realizing how unprepared we were for this kind of weather phenomenon, but it was so odd I can’t really blame them. All in all, it wasn’t a bad experience. We had a four-day weekend and got the excitement of a power outage.