For more than a week, clocks around the UTSA main campus were losing time, giving students a legitimate reason to frequently check their phones.

Some students have expressed that the broken clocks have been stressful during exams, especially written exams that rely on time management for essays.

Other students have not noticed. It seems that when clocks break, a smartphone is a student’s alternative.

“It didn’t affect me that much because I had my phone,” freshman Angela San Juan said.

Christi Fish, executive director of university communications, handles facility-related complaints. According to Fish, the cause of the incident was a power surge that damaged two pieces of equipment that support the master clock, its power supply and its circuit board. Without the master clock sending a correcting pulse to all other clocks on campus, clocks fall out of sync and display inaccurate times.

“It makes the university look like it’s being run by idiots,” claimed English professor Robert Wilhite regarding frequent malfunctions of clocks around campus.

Many clocks on campus now keep accurate time.

The facilities team will perform a spot check this week to ensure repairs on the master clock have resolved the issue.