Residential halls Regents and RH White were evacuated Sunday, following the power outage from a lightning strike on campus on Saturday, but some residents referred to the evacuation as an “eviction.”

White Hall resident Grace Robertson and a friend waited in the latter’s grandparent’s house with no information as she said the dorm’s inside temperature dropped to 30° F and it was “becoming unsafe.” Then a day passed, and Robertson said she and others planned to be self-sufficient for the next few days, having to buy and stock up on food “to feed five people, all of whom were displaced with no information as to when we could come back.”

Robertson, a Type 1 diabetic, lost several units of insulin before she was able to move them to another friend’s refrigerator and it’ll cost her “hundreds of dollars to replace.” This is a cost in addition to the money wasted from spoiled food.

When the University finally informed Robertson regarding the situation, it was to pack up all of her things and leave immediately. Robertson said her RA tried to give out as much information as possible, but there was only so much the RA could do when the University itself was refusing to answer.

“Our floor is full of freshmen,” Robertson said. “Freshmen whose parents were told that the University would take care of their children and then the same university abandoned thousands of people. They were scared and looking for answers when there were none.”

Robertson said she cannot express anything except disappointment and frustration.

“The profound lack of communication is incredible and the way that the University feels that they can continue on with the normal activities while students are sleeping in their cars and are going hungry is insane,” Robertson said.

“They are continuing with basketball games, they are continuing with prospective student tours, they are continuing classes, while people don’t know where they are going to sleep tonight,” Robertson said. “They cannot be allowed to do this to another group of students and if they are going to then they need to inform all incoming freshmen that they will not take care of you in your time of need. No matter how much tuition or Racer Experience fees you pay, they will leave you out in the cold to starve and they will play basketball while you are being evicted from your home.”

Regents Hall resident Jess Ford said she believed her private room in Regents would be the ideal place for her to finish her undergraduate degree at Murray State. A great contrast to now as Ford said she’s had to figure out her sleeping arrangement with no definite knowledge of where she would end up that night.

“I haven’t had a solid place to sleep since Saturday morning,” Ford said. “I have slept in a new place since Sunday night.”

Ford said she received an email around 6 p.m. Sunday that said, “We are requiring everyone to leave by 8 p.m. this evening.” She said it included little to no information beyond that.

After receiving the email, Ford said she went back to Regents and packed her belongings for what she assumed would be a week.

“Personally, I felt this ‘evacuation’ was handled like an eviction,” Ford said.

The University’s response to the displacing of students has been an “alternative housing” approach of packing them into other dorms. Some residents had RAs telling them to “expect a hotel room,” said White Hall Resident Emma Duggan.

However, Ford didn’t get her alternative housing until an hour after Regents was expected to close. She also said some of her friends didn’t get theirs until 10 or 11 p.m.

“Because of that, I had to pay with my own money (around $120) to get a hotel room because my friends and I assumed that we just wouldn’t get our alternate housing,” Ford said.

Ford also said while she eventually got her alternate housing at Hester, she’s been couch hopping as she didn’t want to invade another’s privacy. Ford also said she needs her own privacy as she had a private room in Regents for that purpose.

“I moved into Regents for the ability to be alone whenever I needed it. For the past 96 hours, I have been with people and it has been physically and mentally draining,” Ford said.

Ford said when she reached out to the Housing Office for reimbursement of the hotel room, as $120 was barely something she had, the office replied with a non-answer.

Additionally, Ford also said she’s had to ration her meal swipes as most of her food has spoiled.

“I really don’t know what the University is doing,” Ford said. “When I went back to Regents to get the remainder of my stuff, the outside doors had been boarded up. It all seems really suspicious. … What I would like is just some further communication and maybe a harder effort to fix everything. It just seems as if MSU is sending the same two to three emails with slightly different wording about once a day.”

White Hall resident Joshua Lawrence said the situation has been stressful on his chronic back issues. From what he saw on his floor’s GroupMe chat about the planned evacuation at 8 p.m., he said things seemed to be “a little disorganized” and his RA “didn’t fully know where students were being relocated.”

Lawrence said students were supposed to be out of the buildings by 8 p.m. but alternate housing assignments had not yet been assigned. He said he reached out to Housing and asked what could be done for students with nowhere to go.

“The office was EXTREMELY hesitant to answer my questions, likely because they did not have an answer to begin with,” Lawrence said.

Lawrence said Murray State needs to invest in better generators “so this mess doesn’t happen again.”

“The same thing happened last semester,” Lawrence said. “How is the rest of the town back on, but not these two buildings?”

Lawrence also said the University’s communication has been “remarkably poor.”

“I have seen countless upset students and parents reach out to the school with a lot of questions only to receive very simple, one or two sentence answers, if any at all,” Lawrence said. “We have aired our grievances about this school’s lack of communication for a long time. What will it take for things to get better? How much more catastrophic do things need to get before this school shows an ounce of compassion for the very people who pay them? Why did a basketball game take higher priority than the wellbeing of your students?”

Duggan said the morning after the lightning strike, the room’s temperature was so low “that the only heat I could find was the warmth my own body created” captured by her comforter.

Duggan said she received an email at 5 p.m. saying “the dorm buildings were not going to be regaining power until ‘later this week.’” She was told to pack her belongings and be out of the dorms by 8 p.m.

“That night, three hours after we got the email, (we had) no specification as to what our ‘alternate housing’ would look like for the week or what we needed to pack,” Duggan said.

Duggan said she and friends moved out of the dorms at 8 p.m. but did not receive room assignments until 8:30 p.m. and “were expected to room with strangers in other dorms.” While her peers had booked their own rooms at the Murray Inn and Art Gallery for the night, Duggan said she decided to try the housing assignment given to her in Elizabeth Hall.

“I was let into the building, gave them my name, M number, and signature and I was handed a key to the room,” Duggan said. “No identification was asked of me. Only my name and number. I made my way to this room assignment, unlocked the door, and waltzed into this person’s room while they were not there. I was alone with all of their belongings and was provided a bed without sheets to sleep on. I had no sheets packed with me, (since) when we asked a Resident Adviser what an ‘alternate housing’ assignment may look like, they told us a hotel room would be what to expect. I was told to sleep in a room with a stranger on a bed without sheets.”

After this, Duggan decided the most secure option was to book a room at the Murray Inn. She said friends who stayed across the lot of the Inn asked if she could help them transport their things to their nearby family homes and the dorms of friends who would “let them stay the night with them.”

“These friends had no way of transporting themselves apart from me and the Murray bus route,” Duggan said. “I spent the day transporting people and items around town attempting to find places for us all to stay where we felt safe and secure until I had to return to work once again at 2:30 in the afternoon. I dropped my friends off at the Curris Center where they ate their first meal of the day at noon.”

Duggan said she’s extremely disappointed in Murray State and how they have handled the situation.

“They have brought nothing but stress and unrest to their students during this time, and I hope this helps them to understand just one example of how they have permanently tarnished the ‘Racer Experience’ for me and my colleagues,” she said.

White Hall resident Kyle Stone said MSU has been “surprisingly” hands-off with the issue, only hiring contractors to resolve the electrical issues and giving vague updates over Racer Alert. Stone said he feared for his academic success due to “infrastructural negligence.”

“The lack of clarity has made for quite the panic among many,” Stone said. “With no concrete fix nor any clarity from directors, it is no wonder then why so many students, parents and staff are frustrated. This needs to be resolved.”

In addition to restoring basic needs of hot water, power and fresh water, Stone said the most pressing issue is “clear, concise communication.”

“This situation would not have been as bad if more had been said sooner,” he said. “This vacuum left 700+ people to scramble.”

The Murray State Office of Branding, Marketing and Communication, Facilities Management and the Housing Office did not reply to a reporter’s inquiries on this ongoing situation.