Power outages have become a routine frustration for many students living in Western Washington University dorm Alma Clark Glass Hall, particularly on the fifth and sixth floors, where residents say outages occur so often they’ve adjusted their routines around them.
For Brooklyn Lindsey Taylor, a resident official on the fifth floor, the outages have shaped much of their experience in the building. The most severe incident occurred earlier this year when they first moved into their suite.
“The outlet near my front door was out for two weeks,” Taylor said. “I had placed a Ready Request to get it fixed.” At WWU, a Ready Request is an online maintenance form that students must submit to report repairs or facility issues in their residence halls.
Taylor said communication surrounding the outages has been minimal, leaving both residents and Resident Advisors without clear explanations.
“RAs themselves are not really informed about power outages, which leads to students not being informed about power outages or why they happen,” they said. “We’re just given direction to limit how much we have plugged in our rooms.”
Because of how often the outages occur, students have turned to their own preventative strategies.
“Students have learned to use surge protectors to prevent frequent power outages,” Taylor said. “Though they do cost more and aren’t always available at stores, especially during move-in week when everyone is buying them at once.”
When outages occur, the response process relies on the RA system.
“When RA’s on call are called about power outages, they’re directed to contact the Resident Director on call,” Taylor said. “The RD will then call a maintenance worker to come out and fix the outage.”
Taylor said almost every RA on call, the Resident Advisor assigned each night to handle after-hours emergencies, safety concerns and student reports, receives at least one power-outage call during their shift, illustrating how frequent the issue has become. They added that while students are encouraged to be mindful of what they plug in, more transparency from the university is still needed.
“Always being mindful of how much you have plugged in is a good practice,” they said. “But there should also be more communication from the school so we can be better informed about these power outages.”
For other residents, the outages interrupt essential parts of daily life. Rosie Walker, who also lives on the fifth floor, said the failures primarily affect the outlets powering her mini-fridge.
“It’s usually only the outlets for our mini fridge and two outlets on the wall,” Walker said. “If maintenance is here, all we have to do is go down and ask them to flip it, so it only takes five to ten minutes. But if it happens on a weekend, we have to call the RA on call, and that can take 30 minutes to an hour.”
The uncertainty around response times also disrupts her routine.
“Since it’s our fridge that goes out and we don’t want our food to spoil, we have to stop whatever we are doing and either go get maintenance or call the RA,” Walker said. “It’s annoying because it happens often.”
Walker said the speed of the repair “depends on if they are in the building or not,” making outages unpredictable. As for Western’s handling of the larger issue, she feels communication is lacking.
“I think they can definitely do better because they don’t communicate with us,” Walker said. “It happens often, and they haven’t said if there is a solution or not.”
She added that while maintenance resolves outages once notified, “they haven’t communicated at all beyond telling us the power should be on after they fix it.”
Maintenance workers at Alma Clark say the underlying issue lies with the CAFCI breakers, which they report trip at even the smallest spark. As a result, at least one room experiences an outage almost every day.
Workers have even been called out in the middle of the night to reset breakers. They noted that the outages are most frequent at the beginning of the academic year when students are unfamiliar with the limits of the electrical system and gradually decrease as residents adjust.
For now, residents are encouraged to be cautious with what they plug in and to report outages immediately by contacting the RA on call at 360-935-1310.
Until longer-term solutions are put in place, students say they will continue navigating a school year where the power can — and often does — go out without warning.
Mishele Ross (she/her) is Junior at Western, majoring in News/Editorial Journalism. When she is not hunting down a source or hiding out in the library writing a story for The Front, you can find her listening to music, bowling, or playing a round of golf. You can reach her at misheleross.thefront@gmail.com.
