A series of power outages knocked out electricity to about 90 buildings at Rutgers' sprawling college in New Brunswick, forcing the school to cancel all classes on the two affected campuses for the day and send students to rec centers on other campuses to sleep Wednesday night.
Power was restored to the Cook and Douglass campuses Thursday morning. A message to students of the school's five New Brunswick campuses said classes would resume as normal and that employees should report for work.
Thirty-nine residence halls on the Cook and Douglass campuses were among the buildings experiencing intermittent power problems Wednesday.
All student, health and recreational centers and dining halls on the campuses were also closed as a result of the outage, the university said.
Some 3,000 students living on the Cook and Douglass campuses, many of them freshmen, were told to leave their residence halls, which would be locked by midnight. They were to be sheltered at three recreation centers and gymnasiums on other campuses.
"We are sorry for the inconvenience and disruption this will cause our students, but relocation is necessary to keep you out of harm's way during the extended power outage," Rutgers President Robert Barchi wrote in an email to students.
Displaced students lugged their bags to buses waiting to transport them to the rec centers Wednesday night.
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"They've set up beds in student centers on other campuses, so there'll be tons of kids laid out all over the gym floor, I guess," said one student waiting to board.
Freshman Ava Mroz said the power had been on and off for the past few days before going out again Wednesday morning.
PSE&G said the power outage had nothing to do with the utility.
"Those outages are within the college's internal network," said a spokeswoman. "We bring the power to the college, the college is responsible for distributing that power within its buildings. There’s some kind of equipment issue within the college campus itself that is causing the outages."
PSE&G says it is consulting with Rutgers and helping the university to troubleshoot.
Rutgers first canceled afternoon classes held on the two campuses and said it planned to resume classes some time after 5 p.m. assuming the power problems had been resolved. But the issues lingered into the evening, forcing the university to cancel all remaining evening classes and make arrangements for students in residence halls to be sheltered in the rec centers.
The school's other three campuses are open and operating on a normal schedule, Rutgers said.
It's not clear how long the campuses will be in the dark. One student was informed by the resident advisor to expect the outage to last three to four days.
