Last night at approximately 7 p.m., a blackout forced residents of Atherton Hall to rely on only emergency power. White Building and East Henderson Building were also without power.

Technicians from the Office of the Physical Plant worked to restore power to the affected area.

"All the buildings have emergency power of some sort," said Supervisor of Electrical Utilities Donald Rote. He explained that all the buildings at the University are either connected to a special emergency electrical cable, or have their own generators.

"At the present time, we do not know the cause of the power failure," Rote said.

The technicians worked for about 50 minutes trying to locate the damaged portion of the power cable. Rote said that the cable, which runs between East Henderson and the Pollock area, actually gave off sparks when they attempted to bring back power.

Despite this, Rote remained confident that the power would be back on within 20 minutes.

As the OPP worked outside Atherton Hall, the students inside used the minor disaster to their advantage. Emergency power allowed hall lights to stay on, and students played cards, chess and basically goofed off.

"We played flashlight wars!" said Atherton Hall resident Adam Jones (freshman-general science).

"This has been great! We should have blackouts more often," said Stan Briczinski (freshman-physics) another Atherton Hall resident.

While the blackout was an unexpected break for some students, other students carried on with their studies, huddling under some of the hallway lights that remained on.

"I'm just studying -- wherever I can find the light," said Gerard Gaidos (freshman-physics).

Resident assistants said that they had very little difficulty keeping the students under control.

"People are off-edge, but overall I think everyone's remaining calm. There's not much we can do," said Chad Bumsted, a RA for Atherton Hall.

And then it happened.

At 9:42 p.m., the emergency lights in Atherton Hall went out. Not long afterward the power outage spread to the Centre, South and Pollock halls.

In expectation of a power surge, students were asked by RAs to remove the plugs to all the electrical appliances in their rooms.

And then, at approximately 11 p.m. the lights came back on in all Pollock dorms. The other dorms were still without electricity.