Day to day, our dependence on technology is ever present. Among other things, we rely on technology for transportation, communication and even food storage and preparation.
Campus life is no different. The majority of the Bakersfield College campus departments are unable to function properly without their machines and the electricity that powers them.
If the Grace Van Dyke Byrd Library loses power, there is no back-up system for checking out books. There is no card index for finding books either. The library catalog system is computerized.
The same can be said for Food Services, the bookstore, Public Safety and many other departments at BC.
Alex Gomez, Food Services manager, said that if the electricity goes out in the cafeteria that they would have to shut down and close the doors “for the safety of the staff and students.”
All of the refrigeration in the kitchen is electrical. Gomez said,
“We’ve had power out before and we make sure that the refrigerator doors don’t get opened and closed. We keep them shut so that they can keep the coldest temperature until it’s restored.”
“In the past, before I was here, they actually had to bring generators and hook them up to keep the big refrigerators going, so the food didn’t spoil.”
According to Jennifer Caughron, the bookstore manager, when the power goes out, “we close our doors, which [are] also electric,” said Caughron. “So we have a manual switch that will bring it down.”
“Our phones still work, but everything else is dead to the world.
“It shuts our text book system down. It shuts our computers down, our registers and our lights. So we’re real dependent on technology,” said Caughron.
According to Chief of Public Safety Mark Graf, the Internet, radios, car radios, electronic parking systems and the Code Blue phones are all equally important to Public Safety’s operations and are all dependant on electricity.
Graf said that when the power is out, they resort to using cell phones to communicate with each other.
“Without cell phones, we’d have to be really innovative,” said Graf. “It would be difficult but not impossible. We’d still function, and hope that the power comes back on.”