Electrical problems on the north side of campus forced the closure of the EMU on Wednesday night after the outages caused the building’s fire alarm system to malfunction.
After the alarm went off late in the afternoon, it continued to turn on and off until EMU officials decided to close the building around 5:30 p.m.
EMU Director Dusty Miller said the Department of Public Safety advised the closure of the building. Oregon law says the building cannot be occupied if the alarms are not functioning properly because if there were a real fire, occupants might not be alerted, Miller said.
ASUO President Emily McLain said she was in Oregon Hall when the electricity briefly went out around 4:15 p.m. When she came back to the EMU, she was told there had been shortages all day.
The building’s closure forced several services to shut down or relocate. The Student Senate moved its weekly meeting to the law school, and services such as the Designated Driver Shuttle and Assault Prevention Shuttle, as well as the EMU vendors and KWVA radio station were forced to close for the night. The Emerald, which is also located in the EMU, moved operations to a computer lab in Allen Hall.
Miller said Wednesday evening that work was being done to repair the electrical system, and officials from the fire alarm system were attempting to fix the problem.
As of press time, the EMU was scheduled to re-open at 7 a.m. today.
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