The decision about whether to close the campus because of snow starts at 4 in the morning.
Vice President for Learning Resources Management Melissa Beardmore said a group of administrators monitors weather forecasts. “But then there’s the now-cast,” she said. “What does it look like now? What does the radar look like? What’s happening on campus? Whether we want to open or close, I’d say [relies on] our overarching guidance.”
The final decision, Beardmore said, is hers.
Still, Beardmore said, she errs on the side of “probably more conservative. God forbid, we don’t want anybody to slip and fall or have an accident here on campus.”
The campus closed for snow for three days in January during the winter mini-semester. Students had mixed reactions.
“So I think for instance, like [in] the winter semester [meeting for class on Zoom] was beneficial, because, like, the winter semester is only two weeks long,” first-year nursing student Adara Metz, who was enrolled in a two-week winter course, said.
First-year human services student Lilliana Canterbury said she doesn’t like it when campus closes and classes are held on Zoom.
“It can be very disruptive to my schedule and to my life when I am supposed to be focused and in an academic mindset,” said Canterbury, who noted that her home is full of activity, making it hard to participate in virtual classes.
When the snow causes the campus to close, professors may choose to cancel classes that day or hold them on Zoom or Teams. If classes are canceled, students might have to make them up later.
Beardmore said the facilities staff clears the snow from the campus.
“It’s all hands on deck” when managing snow days, she said.
“We clear our own campus,” Beardmore said. “Our college employees do that. The county doesn’t come in or the state doesn’t come in and do that. And in general, it takes us about six hours to clear the campus of two inches or more.”
Beardmore added: “So in the last storm when it snowed Sunday [Jan. 5] night and then all day Monday, we cleared the campus. We keep enough of the campus cleared for emergency vehicles and if the bus is running, then we wait until it stops snowing for the most part before we start clearing. So in this last storm, we started clearing early Tuesday morning.”
The campus automatically sends alerts about snow closings to the cell phones of students, staff and faculty, and posts the information on social media.
