The majority of students were left in darkness and confusion last night as the power went out across most of the campus for about half an hour.
The power, which went out at approximately 10:30 last night, affected such buildings as the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth Row, Alumni Gymnasium and residence clusters East Wheelock, the Gold Coast, Topliff-New Hampshire, the River, the Choates, Ripley Woodward Smith, and Russell Sage.
Massachusetts Row and Wheeler-Richardson were unaffected, as well as Baker Library and Collis Center.
Different areas of campus experienced varying durations of outage. Most residence halls in the east lost electricity for half an hour. According to student descriptions, Little residence hall lost power for about an hour, and Brown residence hall for about 15 minutes. The River cluster experienced power failure for less than a minute.
Safety and Security could not comment on the cause or exactly which College buildings lost electricity but said the electric problem was not caused by the College. It probably involved Granite State Electric, which provides electricity to this area, according to Safety and Security.
Hanover Police Communications Officer Randy Wagoner said the Police department reported the problem to Granite State Electric who fixed the situation within an hour.
"It wasn't too extraordinary. It was a limited problem that was cleared up pretty quickly," Wagoner said.
Representatives of Granite State Electric were unavailable for comment last night.
According to Wagoner the power outage began at 10:20 p.m. and came back at different times, depending on the location.
Although some areas of the town of Hanover also lost electricity, it was mostly the College that was affected, Wagoner said.
In the residence halls which suffered the shortage, the electricity which powered the hallways was uninterrupted, providing at least some light for residents. All electrical power disappeared in the rooms, where lights and computers could not be turned on.
Campus-wide power was restored by approximately 11:10 p.m.
