Administrators were also stymied by the loss of electricity.

"It was frustrating," said Anne K. Aaron, student program coordinator. "About the only thing I could do in my office was file stuff, until it got too hot to even do that."

Students working for Phillips Brooks House over the summer, living in University housing, also found the power outage an inconvenience.

According to Sarah A. Rodriguez '99, a summer receptionist at PBH who is living in Winthrop, some students were awakened by emergency lights in their bedrooms that were activated when the power was cut.

While emergency lights may have awakened some students, electric alarm clocks didn't.

"We discovered there was no electricity in the morning because some people had electric alarm clocks," said Carolyn M. Fast '98, who is a teacher for Partners for Empowering Neighborhoods (PEN) and also lives in Winthrop. "We almost all missed teaching but some people had battery alarm clocks."

However, Rodriguez said that the power was restored very promptly.

"They had it taken care of pretty quickly," said Rodriguez. "At least when everybody got home that evening they had it working, and that was great, that was really appreciated.