BATON ROUGE — Crews cut power to four Southern University residence halls early Sunday morning, continuing repairs to the campus electrical system one day before students are set to return to class.

The planned outage followed a larger power failure that impacted all campus operations, including classes, for a week. A university spokesperson said the outage was caused by failed electrical equipment.

Southern said it will return to normal campus operations on Monday, and that students and faculty could resume usual schedules and activities. 

Facilities Services and electrical crews spent the week testing the system and identifying failed components. It is unclear if the latest repairs will offer long-term solutions. In a statement, Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis said the university agreed to conduct a holistic assessment of the campus's power infrastructure to identify long-term solutions.

One student said the situation has become familiar at this point.

"It's starting to get a little repetitive," he said.

Freshman Marleigh Wright described what it was like in her dorm when the power went out last Sunday.

"Everybody was downstairs, in a ruckus," Wright said. "Resident Advisors were saying if you leave out, you can't come back in. People were trying to go home, call their parents. People who stay out of state, they had to sit here in the heat."

One student said the repeated outages could point to a bigger issue.

"This shouldn't have been happening multiple times within two weeks, so I agree they should have more money to fix things like this or at least prevent it from happening multiple times," he said.

Another student said she hopes professors ease students back into the material when classes resume.

"I hope they give us a catch-up thing where we can remember all the things we learned beforehand and then get back into the new material," she said.