Though the poor weather cleared in time for Saturday's bike races, spring storms had a significant impact on some students' Little 5 weekend.
Severe weather caused a transformer in Greencastle to blow Friday night, sending power problems across the city and neighboring towns, said Angie Nally, director of Public Safety. Lights flickered, the university's server crashed and Internet across campus disconnected. Though the damaged transformer did not cause trouble for long, many of the proximity card readers around campus had to be reset in order to work properly.
Beyond the power glitches, Nally said the weekend went well, as far as party-weekend safety goes. Because of both Public Safety's and students' alertness on such weekends, Nally said she's seen mostly low-level incidents in the past few years. Both this year and last year, only one student was transported to Putnam County Hospital because of sickness related to alcohol consumption.
Nally said that Public Safety did not document anyone for "excessive, over-intoxication." With the race on the streets, Public Safety focused more on crowd control, as there was no entrance to the race comparable to previous years at Blackstock Stadium at which to survey students.
In university-owned living units, Campus Living and Community Development staff witnessed a similarly tame weekend.
"It was definitely one of the more quiet nights I've ever had doing duties on those big weekends," said senior Patrick Legendre, who was an on-duty community assistant Friday night. Though he went on rounds through upperclass housing, he said other resident assistants reported quiet nights in the freshman dorms, as well.
"Monon is always kind of like the bad one because people don't have a [greek] house yet," Legendre said. "Whenever I do little 5 it's pretty quiet because people are at [greek] houses."
One of the larger safety concerns from the weekend occurred at one of these houses, as the Greencastle Fire Department extinguished a flaming structure at Delta Tau Delta fraternity at 5:35 a.m. Sunday.
The chapter's annual Little 5 statue "Scrotus Maximus" stands three stories tall and leans against the house during the weekend. After it was dismantled, individuals who have yet to be identified set the remnants on fire.
"We haven't gotten the estimates back from insurance, but there were some broken windows and broken tiles," said sophomore Jack Quinn, Delt's president.
The house has a sunken garden below the southern face of the building, and the chapter and alumni paid to renovate the garden last summer. Once the chapter leadership determines who set the structure on fire, the plan is to make those individuals pay for the damage they caused, Quinn said.
