By Sydney Mann ’14, Staff Writer

On September 8^th, 2011 Newark Academy students arrived at school only to be informed that the power had gone out.  As soon as students left their cars they were directed towards the lower gym—the only place in the school where power and working plumbing remained. As students came together in the field house, many students began to wonder, what will happen? Will school be cancelled? More importantly, will the power come back on? What happens if it does not?  Luckily, twenty minutes into the reformed morning meeting, the power came back on. That day however, teachers were told to use electricity sparingly because power was delicate.

Ms. Galvin, Dean of Students, noted that the power lies within the hands of the Head of School and the Crisis Committee (members of the Administrative staff) to decide what the course of action is in cases such as September’s power outage. In this particular case, the Committee already had a plan, as similar situation happened a couple of years ago.  In response to that incident, the Crisis Committee formed a standard operating procedure: the community would assemble in a location containing electricity; which in this case was the Kirby gym. When posing the question to Ms. Galvin, What would have happened if the power never came back on? She replied that it depends on the context of the situation. In this situation there was no danger, therefore school would not have been cancelled.  The source of the outage was specified—there was a short in the Wrestling Gym caused by a leak, the leak being an affect of hurricane Irene, proving to be harmless.  Ms. Galvin also commented on the fact that teachers would be able to find a way to teach without technology.

Ms. Pursell, a math teacher who has incorporated electrified technology into all of her lessons, feels that she would be able to adapt – SmartBoards aren’t everything and people learned Math well without them in the past. She was more concerned with bathrooms for the community, than her ability to teach in the dark. Also looming large on many minds that day was lunch. Although NA does not own a generator, the stoves are gas powered,  which would have allowed hot meals to be prepared.

Judging by the adaptive nature of the NA community, school could go on with little to no power.  Ms. Mahoney commented that, “It was a relief that the power was restored so quickly, and though I missed getting to know my advisees better that first Wednesday morning, I thought the unpleasant situation was handled well by all.  Kudos to the maintenance staff who…got us back on the grid!”