It all began with a golf cart. A famous golf cart, possibly driven by the mascot of MSU. At approximately 11 p.m. on April 3, Sparty’s golf cart was stolen and, after a two-day search, someone found it in Red Cedar River.
Criminal justice junior Zach Grover was taking his usual route to class on April 5 when he crossed the bridge across from Wells Hall by the Computer Center. Popping out of the water, as Grover looked out across Red Cedar River, was something odd.
“I could see the white sticking out from the seats,” Grover said, recalling the moment he found the golf cart. “I remembered ... my friend shared a post about the gold cart missing so I snapped a photo of it and almost went on with my day thinking someone must have called it in already.”
Minutes later, while in class, a friend had urged him to call it in.
He called MSU police and later that day, at 1:17 p.m., MSU police posted on Facebook saying it had found Sparty’s “whip.”
That was Tuesday. An isolated incident gave way to a week full of mishaps and weirdly coincidental events, during which MSU’s campus underwent a week that can only be described by a collective scratching of heads.
Even before the finding of Sparty’s sunken ride, Tuesday had already begun on a strange note.
About 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday at MSU’s T.B. Simon Power Plant, sulfuric acid — known to be highly corrosive — spilled inside the plant and 800 gallons seeped outside. The spill caused Service Road to be shut down until 11:30 a.m. and those working in the building were evacuated.
MSU spokesperson Jason Cody said the spill was caused by a faulty flange, which is a piece of metal that connects two pipes together.
No one was injured as a result of the spill, which was contained.
Then came Wednesday.
That morning, MSU’s Surplus Store caught fire.
The fire at the Surplus Store began while workers tried to fix a conveyor belt inside the cardboard recycling machine. All 20 employees working at the building at the time escaped with no injury and the fire was out by 10 a.m.
The three rare and seemingly odd events in three days solicited a slew of responses from students across multiple social media platforms. Scores of students posted comments ranging from saying MSU was having a mental breakdown, seeing the events as a fulfillment of a prophecy and the start of the end of time.
And then it got more interesting.
With Tweets asking what was next, MSU delivered another kicker.
At varying times during Thursday morning, buildings across campus lost power, leading to more cries of the end and a forthcoming rapture on social media. But the outage was caused by less than biblical proportions — a cable fault at the T.B. Simon Power Plant.
The power outage lasted until approximately noon on Thursday, but not before classes were canceled and dining halls were closed.
“We actually had about half of our equipment knocked off between about 10:09 (a.m.) and 10:11 (a.m.),” Bob Ellerhorst, the director of utilities for MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities said at a press conference Thursday. “About 40 buildings were affected on campus and (at) about 11:35 (a.m.) our last services were restored.”
He said MSU officials turned the power on and off at different locations on campus to determine the source of the problem.
The official cause for the cable fault is unknown, but is unrelated to the chemical spill that occurred on Tuesday, Ellerhorst said.
The slew of mishaps had students preparing for a full collapse of MSU on Friday. And just when it seemed the worst was bound to happen, nothing did. The end of the madness prompted social media posts showcasing shirt designs reading, “I survived the MSU Apocalypse.”
MSU police even added a touch of humor as well on Friday and said via Twitter, “Spartans, let’s cross our fingers and think calm thoughts; and hopefully we won’t have an incident requiring an alert message today!”
Later, MSU police wrote in reply to another Twitter user, “I blame it on my night shift (lieutenant) who just came to day shift & everything just fell apart. Looking at you Lt. Merony!”
