Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Winter weather buries Pitt
By Josh Ames
The Collegio (Pittsburg State U.)
01/04/2007

(U-WIRE) PITTSBURG, Kan. — Last week's winter storm dumped about nine inches of snow on Pittsburg, Kan., but that wasn't enough to close Pittsburg State University.

Despite the heavy snowfall, university officials decided to let the instructors choose whether to cancel their classes.

Steve Scott, vice president of academic affairs, says this method of class cancellation has always worked for the university.

"The system we have in place was designed to allow individual faculty to cancel classes due to inclement weather," said Scott. "Closing the university altogether is a decision that only the university president can make. It's part of our campus policy."

Safety precautions

Even though class cancellations were made on an individual faculty basis, many faculty members say they did not want students driving to attend classes.

Chris Spera, assistant professor of psychology, says with weather conditions like these, a student's well-being is more important than attendance.

"I'd much rather have my students be safe than risk getting into an accident by coming to school," said Spera.

In a university press release issued Friday, President Tom Bryant urged students and staff living away from campus to not place themselves at risk to come to work or classes.

"We are here to serve those 1,000 students who are able to walk from their residence halls on campus or from their apartments near the campus, but we don't want anyone — students, faculty or staff — to put themselves at risk to get here today (Friday)."

Professors press on

Although the majority of classes were canceled, some teachers still ventured to class. Assistant professor of accounting Becky Heath says only a handful of students attended both of her classes last Friday, but she still felt that it was her duty to be there for the students who were willing to brave the weather.

"This is only my second year here and my first experience with bad weather," said Heath. "If the university is open, then I'm expected to hold class."

Stephen Teller, professor of English, agrees. Even though only

one student showed up to his General Literature drama class, he felt it was his duty to be here as well.

"I've rarely missed my classes for anything," he said. "If the university doesn't close, then I feel I should be here. I walked through some pretty deep snow to get here, but I don't hold it against the students who didn't make it. Let's just say there was no point in taking roll."

Calls for cancellation

Stephen Harmon, assistant professor of history, says when he woke up on Friday morning, he didn't think many students would show up. "I knew as soon as I opened up my garage door that I should've canceled class," said Harmon. "I ended up canceling all my classes anyway, but I think they should've just closed the university altogether."

Class cancellations were posted on the PSU Web site, and although the Internet is designed to convey information quickly and efficiently, not all people have ready access to it.

Mansi Patel, senior in psychology, says posting class cancellations on the university Web site isn't enough for some people.

"It's not a good way to announce class cancellations because not everyone has a computer," said Patel. "The college should put together a general information hotline for situations like these."

Workers unite

Butch Herring, director of the University Police and Parking Services, says his department became that hotline on Friday morning.

"We mostly dealt with phone calls from people wanting to know if classes were canceled," said Herring. "Our dispatchers went onto the PSU Web site and looked at the class cancellations and were able to tell people if their classes were canceled or not."

Herring added that the lack of traffic on campus that day was a good thing. If a large number of students had attempted to attend classes, the probability of accidents would have been much higher.

"When everybody tries to make it to class, that's when we start getting all the minor fender benders and things like that," Herring said. "Even at a three-inch snow, the university doesn't have the equipment capable of clearing everything out."

With the equipment that the university does have, the PSU grounds crew was still able to put in some overtime and get a good portion of the snow cleared out.

Terry Pepper, of the PSU grounds crew, says he put in nearly 20 hours of overtime. Pepper says the main problem he's dealt with, beside the snow, is rude and impatient people in the parking lots.

"People are always driving right in front of you, driving right underneath the backhoe and cutting you off," said Pepper. "There is no courtesy given to us and people think since we don't have flashing lights on the tractors, that they don't have to stop or slow down for us. They just keep on going."

Good, clean fun

Even though the snow slowed things down for a few days in Pittsburg, some still found the time to take advantage of the weather and have a little fun.

On Monday afternoon, members of the Sigma Chi fraternity erected a 7-foot snow sculpture of a male appendage in the front yard of their house. When the sun went down, fraternity members positioned lights around it so they could see what they were doing but, alas, they could only keep it up for a couple of hours before university and city police arrived and threatened them with a $250 fine for indecency.

Mike Campbell, fraternity member, says the fraternity has done this for the last three years, whenever there is a large snowfall.

"For the last two years it hasn't really snowed that much. So this year when we got the snow, we decided to do it again. We didn't mean any harm by it," he said, laughing.

Attempts to contact city and university police regarding the incident were unsuccessful.

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