The 2026 academic year at Keene State began with a few power outages in the early morning on Monday, Aug. 31, and Tuesday, Sept. 1. These outages at the beginning of the year raise the question of what can be done in the summertime to prevent these scenarios or to create a more efficient response.
The outage that occurred on the first day of school was due to a squirrel that had somehow managed to surge the power and cut it. This scenario played out in the Spring of 2025, when a squirrel also shut the school’s power down in the middle of the day. This outage lasted about 30 minutes and even caused cancellations of classes and meetings. Two different squirrel-induced outages in less than two years are pretty astounding, and the school should be able to fix that problem so that it doesn’t hinder students and faculty.
The power was then shut down Tuesday morning to fully fix the problem, but is this saga of squirrel madness over? Have they made the improvements so that wildlife is not able to shut down a campus holding thousands of people at a time? There are tests done over the summer, and the power needs to be available for some buildings anyway, so this is not a concern that the school is not checking or keeping up with the power outages; it is a concern about not doing enough to prevent an issue that has now occurred multiple times.
Going forward, there should be a change in the protection of the areas where wildlife has seemingly been able to sneak in and disrupt the power. It is an unfortunate event and Keene State can not mitigate the squirrels around the area because the campus is built on and around nature.
This outage happening at this point in the year is also unfortunate because all of the students are now getting in the flow and settling into campus. Thanksgiving break is far out, so until then there are not many times when the school can afford to be on edge about the power. Faculty members have to hope that their semester-long plans can be followed through without having to change them for a missed class due to an outage. In New Hampshire, we know weather can disrupt classes and mess up schedules, but action against squirrels taking out the power can be taken for sure.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
jenscoe@kscequinox.com
