The Langston, a residence hall owned by Cleveland State University, had a power outage beginning Monday, Nov. 10, forcing many student residents to relocate to a nearby hotel until power was fully restored on Friday, Nov. 14.
The power outage left students in buildings four and five of The Langston without electricity and heat. Students also did not have access to the buildings and could not lock their doors.
No statements came from CSU Residence Life & Housing until 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 11, when the department emailed affected residents that maintenance had contacted the Illuminating Company to restore power.
While the company was able to restore power to building five by 1 p.m., a second company was brought in to address the outages in building four. During the work, the breaker tripped, causing a larger outage in parts of buildings four and five. CSU Residence Life & Housing sent a follow-up email at 4:30 p.m. to inform affected student residents.
“As a result, we have made arrangements for accommodations at the Comfort Inn,” read the email. “Any students whose apartment has no power are allowed to stay at the hotel until we can resolve the issue…We anticipate that resolving this issue may take a couple of days.”
Arrangements were made through the morning of Monday, Nov. 17, and students were paired with their roommates.
Bridget Green, a CSU student and resident of The Langston, described her experience throughout the outage as “pretty terrible.”
“My experience was like many of the unfortunate students, pretty terrible,” she shared with The Cauldron. “It was beyond cold in our apartment, snowing outside overnight before the school even made a comment acknowledging the outage. My dad, who has spoken with ‘higher ups’ at CSU before, made a call to [Director of Mechanical, Electrical & Plumbing at CSU] Dave Pekala at about 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 11, and he had absolutely no idea there was even a power outage.”
Green added that she had a “generally smooth” relocation experience, though she and her roommate had to leave their belongings in their room in The Langston, which was not locked due to the outage.
“Luckily, our belongings were still there when we returned.”
By the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 14, power was restored to all parts of buildings four and five. Green and her roommate were good to return to their room by the night of Nov. 12.
“I believe the situation absolutely could have been handled better,” said Green when asked how she felt about the administrative response. “Our RAs did their best to find us information. At one point, my RA even offered to use her own money to get us warm hot chocolate because she felt so horrible for not being able to help. But they were seemingly ignored. And after the phone call with [Dave Pekala] I mentioned, it was clear that CSU had not been effectively communicating with all departments to fix the issue.”
Since power was restored, Green said, there have been no other major issues.
The Cauldron reached out to Emily Hudnack, administrative & finance coordinator for CSU Residence Life & Housing on Friday, Nov. 21 for comment. She did not respond.
Ele Solovyov 
csucauldron