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  • When Good Schools Won't Close

    By Oronte February 1, 2008 1:39 pm

    Oh, I know: Your drifts are bigger than our drifts, and all that. Our friends in Green Bay won’t be impressed, but we’ve been having some weather here this week. Tuesday morning it was nearly 50 degrees. That afternoon I got caught in tropical rain, lightning, thunder, severe flooding. At dinnertime, a tornado watch. By 11 p.m., when I was sitting up blogging, there was a straight wind of 37 miles per hour, gusting to 52, that rattled the windows alarmingly, and it was 10 degrees outside before wind chill. (Inside, it was a cozy 15.)

    Last night we got a foot of snow. Every courtroom, daycare, school, and college in six counties is closed—except Hinterland University. The administration seems to make it a point of pride never to close. Last winter a blizzard did close campus, but it was the first time in a quarter-century.

    It’s a big job to keep things running. As the storm approached, an e-mail from the head of Maintenance explained, “The Maintenance Division is responsible for providing snow and ice removal on 23 miles of roadway, 130 parking lots with 16,000 spaces, 80 miles of sidewalk, 6 miles of bike lane and over two hundred and fifty buildings on 1400 acres. Snow removal after a major storm event, especially when high winds are involved, can be daunting and time consuming. Final completion of the effort can take several days.”

    This seemed to hint at closure, but this morning, a terse message from the Chancellor: “Classes WILL be held.”

    Our administrators are tougher than your administrators.

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Comments on When Good Schools Won't Close

  • i disagree
  • Posted by Martin on February 1, 2008 at 2:40pm EST

  • I am NOT a big fan of keeping colleges and universities open simply because you can, when weather threatens the lives and safety of our students, it's time to take a hit.
    I work at a university where we traditionally get almost 300 inches of snow each winter. Yeah, that's a lot and we do close from time to time, especially when commuting to and from school is going to present a hazard to our students. Safety first, I always say!

  • Posted by Jack at Ohio University on February 2, 2008 at 6:05am EST

  • Great photo, Oronte.
    You are much younger than I thought.

  • Jack
  • Posted by Oronte on February 3, 2008 at 2:25pm EST

  • Botox.

  • Hinterland fails its own rhetoric (yet again)
  • Posted by DaveM on February 3, 2008 at 2:45pm EST

  • Coming from Western New York, I'm accustomed to having school even when there are 7-8 inches of snow on the ground (and more falling). Losing a class--for snow, illness, whatever--can be awfully disruptive to a course trajectory, and I applaud their efforts to stay open unless absolutely necessary.

    Leaving aside for the moment that Inner Station outside of campus evidently owns only 2 snow plows, what drives me nuts is the message in keeping open when everything else for 20 miles in all directions is closed, including, of course, schools and daycare centers. The message is pretty clear: parents, screw you. Miss a day of work or class or bring your children (as our graduate office secretary did on Friday). Do your job, be a diligent student, and keep your kids entertained. By the way, there are no accessible childcare facilities on campus.

    For a school that has built its "brand message" (it pains me to utter those words in connection with higher education) around community outreach and expanded access through growing online course initiatives and the like, it still imagines its students as 18-22 year old campus residents with neither obligations nor health problems--they don't need courses offered at night, childcare opportunities, or health insurance worth crap. Faculty and staff are evidently similar.

    Paired with the usual tough-guy attitude coming out of the offices of the president and the chancellor, and we have yet another example of Hinterland's actions contradicting its stated aims.

  • Snow days and sustainability
  • Posted by G.Rendell on February 4, 2008 at 9:40am EST

  • My own campus gets serious winter, and I've long noted that senior administration seems to assume that all faculty, staff and students live within walking (slogging?) distance of campus -- we hardly ever close.

    From a sustainability perspective, however, that might be a good thing. The folks with the longest drives -- the greatest vulnerability to bad weather -- are precisely the folks whose commuting behavior creates the most emissions. Rather than enabling long commutes, maybe schools should look into enabling/facilitating people's decisions to locate near campus.

    Commuting behavior contributes something like 20% of emissions at an average university; encouraging people to reside where walking, biking or taking public transit to campus is a viable option can only cut down that number.

  • It's not just the weather...
  • Posted by Originally from Minnesota on February 6, 2008 at 10:20am EST

  • The university I work at rarely closes, probably because the two people responsible for the decision (both well-paid administrators) live across the street from campus.

    The rest of us who can't afford to live nearby (the nearest affordable safe housing is a half hour commute in good weather) must risk our own safety to come to work for meager pay, or sacrifice one of our few vacation days. (I'm used to driving in snow, but that doesn't help when I'm surrounded by people who drive like they aren't accustomed to snow at all.) And if you have kids, well, you'd better have back-up childcare.

    This isn't just about the weather, it's another sign of affluent administrators either not caring or not even being aware of the issues that their lower-paid colleagues, particularly staff in offices, libraries, food services and janitorial areas, must face.

  • On emissions and school closings
  • Posted by T-bone , assessment associate for PEARL at University of Nebraska at Lincoln on February 7, 2008 at 4:45am EST

  • Another benefit of closing the university is that it provides students time to catch-up on their lagging studying, faculty time to catch-up on their full email boxes, and everyone else a nice break from the winter blues. And, of course, the safety issue is, clearly, most important.

    G.Rendell noted that 20% of a universities emissions came from commuting. Does this imply that the remaining 80% of emissions came from [name your most hated department on campus]?

  • snow and ice removal
  • Posted , Snow Removal Kansas City at snow removal service on September 23, 2009 at 9:00am EDT

  • Great Post!Actually,Our snow and ice management team has decades of experience in managing Kansas City's unique weather patterns and storm systems. We work 24/7 to Snow Removal Kansas City remove ice and snow from your property and we do not stop until the work is done.

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