Moulton Hall resumed service on Tuesday for dinner, ending a 13-day power outage associated with a faulty main breaker. The outage halted the dining hall’s operations, leaving Thorne Hall as the only dining option leading up to fall break.

The initial outage was reported to the campus community in an email from Executive Director of the Office of Safety and Security Randy Nichols on September 30, which informed students of a “localized power outage” and asked them to use Thorne Hall as a substitute. In the following days, Nichols issued additional advisories as the power outage continued.

“The power outages were due to a faulty main breaker. A breaker of this size is not available off the shelf and required a special order,” Director of Communications Doug Cook wrote in an email to the Orient. “Power was fully restored on Monday, and we don’t anticipate any further issues.”

Moulton’s main dining operation remained closed throughout fall break, during which it has historically been typical to only have one dining hall in full operation. The rest of Moulton Union was powered back up last Wednesday, October 5, for administrative use; however, the College decided against reopening the dining hall out of concern that the faulty breaker would not be able to withstand kitchen power uses.

“Moulton Union was powered back up on Wednesday for general occupancy. The decision was made not to use the kitchen as we could not guarantee reliable power when putting the kitchen load back on the faulty breaker that had already tripped twice. They didn’t want to risk being midway through meal prep and having the breaker trip again without being able to reset it,” Cook wrote.