When the Lights Went Out

Maybe you were at Beloit the time a squirrel brought the campus lights down after it tripped over a transformer during finals week. Or maybe you remember that other time, when a snake slithered into the buried electrical equipment and pulled the plug on the power.

Campus power outages have occurred only a handful of times, and they’ve usually felt more like a gift than an inconvenience, a break in the routine or a reason for students to throw the mother of all parties.

We’re planning a future magazine story about what happened during some of these outages. If you were there, you can help us. Send a quick email to belmag@joker47.net to share your story or photos or both.

Thanks go to recently retired College Archivist Fred Burwell’86, who started us off with a photo of his very own commemorative blackout pin from 1983.

Credit: Alex Garcia