Around 9:25 a.m., as students were hurrying to turn in their final history papers, the printer suddenly stopped working. While sophomore Zaidan Gbadamosi was worried, he figured that he would have enough time to print his paper later. He went to his next class, and everything was normal until 9:45 a.m.
“All of a sudden, my teacher couldn’t connect to the Wi-Fi. Then the board went out, the lights went out, and I heard a big boom,” Gbadamosi said.
Across the street from the Upper School, a transformer had caught on fire. White smoke emitted from the burning equipment, spreading an acrid smell across North Campus. The incident prompted a group of firefighters to arrive on Westheimer Road.
History teacher Lisa Hirschmann said that the sophomores who haven’t finished printing out their history papers will not be penalized.
Teachers, forced to change plans on the fly, found different ways to finish up their interrupted classes. Many took their classes outside to the Plaza and to the Great Lawn.
Students had mixed reactions to the outage.
“I feel scared because there’s a lot of chaos right now,” sophomore Ryan Vo said right after the lights went out. “It’s really stressful.”
Freshman Leo Frenkel still needs to print his history paper, but he enjoyed that his class had a change of scenery.
“I’m in English class, and we don’t really need our internet,” Frankel said. “We actually got a nice outside class.”
The School was sending continuous updates to parents and teachers as they assessed the situation. At 10:35, joyful screams all around the Upper School campus rang through the un-air-conditioned and dark halls: administrators had announced that classes were canceled for the remainder of the day.
Classes will resume tomorrow. Grades K-8 remained in session today, and athletes were still required to attend any after-school commitments.
But today, all the students had to worry about was enjoying their day in the sun.
