What was supposed to be a quiet Sunday night at Southern University turned into a chaotic start to the week as a campus-wide power outage left students sweating, frustrated, and questioning the reliability of campus infrastructure.
The first outage hit late Sunday night, plunging dorms into darkness. Students found themselves unable to charge their phones, use fans, or even sleep comfortably as the air conditioning shut off amid heavy rain outside. “It was hot, humid, and you couldn’t do anything,” said Tailyn Hiner, a sophomore from Texas. “I was completely fine, but it was unbearable for others. The air was thick, and we were all just hoping the lights would come back on.”
The power briefly returned around 5 a.m. Monday morning, offering a sigh of relief to students preparing for class. But just as the day began to settle, the lights started flickering again around midday, and by 1 p.m., the entire campus went dark once more. This time, it wasn’t just an inconvenience. By early afternoon, students near the back of the dorms reported smoke rising from the area housing the university’s main power panel. Fire trucks and emergency personnel soon arrived, with flashing red and blue lights illuminating the gray Baton Rouge skies.
The outage forced class cancellations across campus, leaving students once again confined to hot dorm rooms with little to no ventilation. Temperatures in some residence halls reached uncomfortable levels, and frustration quickly spread among the student body. For freshman Kendall Cook, the experience was a jarring introduction to college life. “As it is my first year here, it’s been a lot going on,” she said. “Southern needs to get it together. Between the outages, the heat, and the confusion, it just doesn’t feel safe or organized.”
Power was finally restored around 5 p.m. Monday, but not before the university community had spent nearly 24 hours enduring one of the most disruptive infrastructure failures in recent memory. In a brief statement, the Office of Student Affairs acknowledged the situation, assuring students that Southern University was “working with Entergy to determine the cause and prevent future incidents.” However, for many, that reassurance wasn’t enough.
For Southern University, this wasn’t just a blackout. It was a reminder of how fragile comfort and safety can be, and how quickly the lights can go out, leaving a campus full of students in the dark, waiting for answers that still haven’t come.
