Murray State recently experienced a wide-sweeping power outage across the residential side of campus. Backup generators were offline for around eight hours, but full power wasn’t completely restored for a few days, but White Residential College and Regents Residential College remained powerless and waterless until power was returned.

The University, like all places, has lost power in the past due to unforeseen circumstances. However, this time, a single squirrel was able to cripple the power. We wonder if this could lead to a potential issue in the future and if our power grid is really that vulnerable? Short answer: yes.

The school’s response to this issue was to put in portable restrooms for students to use until the power was restored. The campus attempted to accommodate students as well as they could, but fell short. Students with disabilities were affected greatly by this power outage and were even further left in the dark.

Now the real question that needs to be addressed is why and how did this occur? Students have been trying to piece it together leading to all sorts of rumors. From a bird hitting a transformer to the primary transformer exploding, the answer came from the University public relations office: a squirrel. Outside of the transformer, the campus’s backup generators were not working properly when they should have been ready for a situation like this.

This issue became more exaggerated due to lack of transparency from the University. Students were left questioning what even happened with the outage days after the power was restored. This left us with even more questions of how a squirrel could take down the electric grid for the entire north of Chestnut Street and Regents and White.

The University not being transparent on this issue leads us to wonder what is really happening behind closed doors. How do we know this or something similar will not happen again? Was this loss of power a freak occurrence or is this going to be an ongoing problem that will arise again?

The most we can hope for is that this issue won’t happen again but, we can know for certain that we will not understand what really happened due to the University staying quiet about what really occurred.