Graduation ceremonies won't be affected by outage

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- The power outage in downtown South Bend is happening at a busy time for the area. Notre Dame and St. Mary's are both holding graduation ceremonies this weekend.

Parent Maria Stylianou was shocked when she heard her hotel might not have power.

"What? We don’t have power? What? I don’t know. We didn’t check in yet," said Stylianou.

Stylianou and her family spent Friday walking around Notre Dame. They are celebrating her daughter’s graduation from law school.

At the Doubletree, they have been working frantically to get the power on for their 250 guest rooms.

“You know we can change. We can go to McDonalds. It’s not a big deal," said Stylianou.

Notre Dame has dorm rooms available on campus for $40 a person this weekend if anyone needs a room with power.

University administrators said commencement ceremonies this weekend won’t be affected by the power outages downtown.

Justin Rumps was at a graduation party at Club Fever Thursday night when the power went out.

“It was kind of chaotic in the bar actually. People didn’t know what to do and people were bumping into each other, yea just chaotic," said Rumps.

Rumps has nearly 2 dozen family members coming into town for graduation.

Originally he had reservations at Fiddler’s Hearth for dinner but now he says he’s not sure what’s going to happen.

“We actually got them but it’s kind of in limbo now with all that so we’re looking for different options," said Rumps. “Notre Dame people are pretty resourceful so at the end of the day they’ll find other places to go. It’s really unfortunate for the businesses downtown but at the same time you just got to roll with the punches.”

Both Notre Dame and St Mary’s administrators sent out emails to their students keeping them informed about the outages.