Hot Time at South Brunswick High Graduation After AC Fails

South Brunswick, NJ - "Miserable." "Brutal." "I hope we never have it there again."

These are just some of the words echoed by parents and teachers after the air conditioning failed to work at South Brunswick High School's graduation Tuesday morning at the Sun National Bank Center in downtown Trenton. Some graduating seniors were so overcome by the heat they had to be escorted out of the ceremony, since they didn't feel well, Patch has learned.

Audience members said they were sweating profusely inside the stifling arena, after a storm early Tuesday morning knocked out the arena's air conditioning system.

"Earlier today, due to inclement weather, our power was affected and we worked with HVAC technicians to get the air conditioning units back to working order as quickly as possible,” said Spectra’s Claudio Oliveira, General Manager of the Sun National Bank Center. "We notified officials of South Brunswick High School of the situation early this morning, in advance of their 11 a.m. commencement."

"Clearly, this was a non-preventable condition that occurred at an inopportune time," schools superintendent Gary McCartney told Patch. "By the time power was restored, the arena was hot and the system couldn't overcome the heat very quickly. By the time the ceremony was ending, the conditions were improving."

In response to the heat, the Sun Center did provide water to students as they were preparing to walk and collect their diplomas, said Diana Scrabonia, Director of Marketing at the arena. But a school employee said the arena was at first charging $4.25 for water, and not providing it for free.

Nobody Patch talked to wanted to give their name because they didn't want the AC snafu to mar the overall celebratory mood of graduation day.

In response to some parents calling for next year's ceremony to be moved elsewhere, McCartney said, "As always, we will debrief and consider any and all options moving forward."

South Brunswick has held its high school graduation at the Sun Bank Center for the past several years, because there is nowhere else in South Brunswick that can accommodate a crowd of that size in case of rain.

Mercer County owns the arena, but it is managed by a management company called Spectra, a division of Comcast Spectacor, which bills itself as "the ultimate hospitality firm." Comcast Spectacor also does the arena management for the Philadelphia Flyers and Philadelphia's Wells Fargo Center.

The Sun Center does quite a business in high school graduations this time of year, hosting 15 schools total in June and three back-to-back graduations on Tuesday alone. South Brunswick's was at 11 a.m., followed by Hightstown at 3 p.m. and Nottingham Tuesday evening. The air conditioning was working by the afternoon, in time for those two graduations.

Scrabonia said she did not know offhand how much South Brunswick School district paid to host graduation at the Sun Center.