Power cuts across three Oxford libraries and faculties led them to cancellations and closures on Monday morning.
The St Cross building, which houses the English Faculty Library as well as the Law Faculty, was forced to briefly close due to lack of electricity, though the power was back on by 10am. The Law Faculty had to postpone a 9am lecture in Administrative law.
The lecturer, Dr Alison Young, broke the news to her students saying, “You may have thought that you had a substantive legitimate expectation that today’s Administrative law lecture, on legitimate expectations, would take place. After all, there was a clear representation that the lecture would take place on the timetable, this may have been reinforced by statements made in previous lectures, and past practice would tend to suggest that lectures do take place at the times set out on the published lecture list.”
However, she continued, “It was a proportionate response to re-schedule the lecture in the light (or more accurately ‘non-light’) of the complete lack of electrical power in the St Cross Building.”
Second year English student, Juliet Roe, commented, “No self-respecting English student would be at the EFL at that time, I imagine there were some pretty disorientated dust mites and the odd irritated librarian though.”
The Social Sciences Library was affected by the power cut, but remained open. A spokeswoman for the library told Cherwell, “The main way that it affected it was that most of the lights in the right hand side of the library went off, and, although our readers PC’s were getting power, they could not connect to the internet. The system we use for checking books in and out was down as well (which was an obvious cause for concern!), as were the printers.”
She labelled it “uneventful” but an “inconvenience.”
Wadham student Alistair Smout commented, “It was nice to have some mood lighting in the nation’s favourite library.”
Monday’s events came after a power cut on Saturday, which affected around 1,100 homes in Marston and Headington, as well as Oxford Brookes.
