Lights Out! Churchill power-cut plunges college into darkness

Power, politics, and a barbecue in the car park.

Cambridge Churchill College fire system formal hall Harry Potter JCR politics porters power cut power outage room

From midday until 9pm yesterday, students at Churchill college briefly enjoyed an Amish experience.  

The North Court, and main building lost all power for an extended period of time, leaving students without heating or hot water.

As one maintenance worker ambiguously put it, a “major device failed” leaving large parts of the college without power.

Harry Potter-esque scenes transpired later in the evening, as a Charity formal took place under candle-light.

In a slightly less romantic turn of events, all of the food was cooked on a barbecue in the car park.

Harry Potter and the undercooked chicken.

Churchill’s JCR president informed college residents that a specialist was being shipped in to fix the issue, but that students should be “extremely careful now that it is getting dark.”

Students living in rooms that were not effected, were gently encouraged to offer space to those friends who were living in darkness.

The North Court was described by one student as a dystopian scene from “Half-life” as keycard mechanisms slowly failed, and the college became a “lifeless concrete shell.”

Students were also forbidden from using candles in their rooms, as the power outage apparently affected the colleges main fire system.

In typical Cambridge fashion, the power outage was used by some students to express political grievances…

From power cuts to politics

Power returned to the college at 9pm, saving residents a frosty, torchlit night.