MOUNT VERNON – What happens when a residential college responsible for housing and feeding about 1,000 students loses electricity for most of a weekend?
“The largest challenge was to provide safe, hot food for students, with very little equipment or light, and to keep the products we had safe,” said Gretchen Mulinix, director of catering for Sodexho dining services at Cornell, after a winter storm left Mount Vernon without electricity Feb. 24-25. Cornell classes were held on schedule Monday, Feb. 26.
Food was moved from walk-in coolers to walk-in freezers to keep the products colder; expensive perishables were driven to Coe College in Cedar Rapids for safekeeping. Steaks that had thawed were prepared outside on a large gas grill for students’ Sunday night meal, which was served earlier than normal to take advantage of available natural light in the dining halls. Powdered drink mixes were used because beverage machines couldn’t operate. Water for hot chocolate and hot tea was heated on gas burners set low. Peanut butter and jelly, bagels, fruit, cereal and salad and deli bar were staples at meals.
Food is prepared in a kitchen on the lower level of The Commons and normally transported in service elevators up two floors to the serving areas. With power down, the food had to be shuttled by hand upstairs and garbage had to be carried by hand downstairs and outside.
Dining services management, staff and student workers logged long and challenging hours. A staff member from Cedar Rapids spent Saturday night in the Rathskeller snack bar to ensure she was on campus to work Sunday. Another staff member’s husband brought camping lanterns from their Springville home to provide lighting for the kitchen.
In the residence halls, student resident assistants made rounds more frequently to ensure they were in constant communication with their residents, said Chris Wiltgen, director of residence life. Candles, normally banned in the residence halls, were allowed for lighting but were closely monitored.
Facilities management staff worked the weekend plowing slushy snow and ice accumulating on sidewalks, in parking lots and on campus roadways. Worker Jeff Mick had praise for students who approached him asking for shovels so they could help clear sidewalks.
The Iowa Conference indoor track and field championships continued without electricity at Cornell’s Richard and Norma Small Multi-Sport Center. Despite the outage, enough light was streaming in through the facility’s windows to keep events running. However, the high-tech timing system was replaced by hand-held stopwatches. At the completion of the meet, several hundred guests were delayed in departing until a downed power line could be removed from the Multi-Sport Center’s parking lot.
With e-mail, Internet and campus phones not working, college staff wrote announcements on large paper and hung the posters on dining hall windows to keep students updated on meal times, residence hall news and any adjustments to class schedules for Monday.
Jim Brown, special assistant to the president, and Jean Donham, college librarian, called academic department chairs who called their faculty to confirm plans for Monday classes. “The general consensus was that electricity or no electricity, classes would occur,” said Brenda Tooley, dean of the college. Her husband collected the reports she received on classes and walked the information to campus so it could be posted on the dining hall windows.
By Sunday afternoon, power was restored to all campus buildings except the Multi-Sport Center, which received electricity Tuesday morning and reopened for campus and community use Wednesday morning.
Several Cornell students who volunteer with local emergency services agencies spent their weekend ensuring the well-being of local residents. Garrett Feddersen, a junior from Ida Grove, Iowa, is an EMT with Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance. He helped set up city shelters for residents without power, made house checks on elderly residents and organized about 30 student volunteers to clear ice and snow surrounding assisted living centers and to alert area residents to the city shelters.
“I went door to door in the dorms and called the Greek groups,” Feddersen, a member of Sigma Kappa Psi, said of gathering volunteers. “I got 30 people in 15 minutes. It was quite the community effort. Mount Vernon did phenomenal.”