… I’m a little surprised. I mean, I tend to think that the schools around here get closed a little too easily– I have accused Southeast Michiganders of being “weather babies” in the past. But EMU was closed on February 10, I believe with less snow on the ground (though that’s just a guess based on looking out the window in my kitchen) and with not as much snow yet to come. I don’t know, but if we closed on February 10, why are we open today?
Well, drive careful, people.
I am guessing because the snow began in the night, the Plant staff has had overnight to work on the parking lots. Those guys do a great job! Be safe everyone.
But if you can’t get in… My students are reporting horrible conditions ten miles out. The snowfall is just as deep but three times as heavy as Feb. 11 and much more is on the way.
So cars can get in but they can’t get out . . .
Personally, I’m not as concerned with the parking lots and sidewalks at EMU (I agree that the folks who do the clearing/shoveling do a pretty good job) so much as I am worried about getting to campus. Or really, I’m worried about folks who have any distance to travel about getting to campus.
I was talking with my neighbor this morning while shoveling a bit, and we both have a theory: perhaps we only have one snow day a year, and since we already used it, we’re going to have to suck it up today.
Possible! But that is one more day than UM-Ann Arbor has had this year! Just another thing that is better about EMU than UM!
But these conditions are treacherous. It’d be sensible to close. I would rate weather severity on Feb. 10 a 4/10. Today is an 8.5/10. The inconsistency is perplexing, indeed.
I would strongly urge the powers that be to revisit their rationale for keeping the U open. As I understand it, they feel that 75% of students live within 3 miles of campus, so it makes sense to call Eastern a residential university. While that may have been true a while back, informal polling in my classes (non-scientific as hell!) puts that number under 50%. I’m definitely not taking attendance today.
How many inches of snow does it take to justify sacrificing commuters’ safety?
To be honest, I don’t know if EMU should have closed or not on February 10 or today. I can go either way with that. On the one hand, I realize that we do have a lot of commuters. On the other hand, the vast majority of EMU folks (students, faculty, staff, administrators, etc.) do live within about 10 miles or so of EMU, and we’re all “grown-ups” here. I mean, we don’t have to cancel for the same reasons they cancel in K-12 schools.
But what I really want to know is what exactly is the process here? It just seems wildly inconsistent to me. I was awake before 6 am (the time by which EMU cancels morning classes) both on February 10 and this morning, and it seemed about as bad to today as it did then. But then again, I’m just looking out the window and making a guess. Is there a more systematic process here? Or does it depend on what Susan Martin sees outside her window on a given (potential) snow day?
Sitedad, I don’t disagree that we are all grownups, but the people who drive their kids to school are grownups, as are the teachers, bus drivers, etc. In fact, kids *walking* to school are probably safer than grownups *driving*.
So why do the K-12 schools cancel classes?
And I’m as curious as you are about the decision-making process at EMU.
I think most K-12 cancel school as often as they do because they don’t want to have situations where grade schoolers are standing in the cold on a bus stop, or getting stuck in the snow or in an accident while on the bus, etc. For secondary schools, I think there’s also concern with 16 year olds driving in the snow and cracking up cars. This is all just a guess, but I know I’ve seen media stories over the years where these kinds of things happened (3rd graders waiting at a bus stop for an hour and in blizzard conditions, high school kids wrapping cars around telephone poles on icy roads) and that there was public outcry about closing schools.
I also think that both K-12 schools and universities (unlike employers, for example) have to typically make “all or nothing” kinds of judgments. I mean, if you call your employer and say “hey, I’m snowed in,” you can probably make a deal with your boss and/or not get paid for that day of missed work. But it would be crazy for even a small school to try to decide who should or shouldn’t miss school on a case by case basis.
And these decisions are obviously different based on region and institutions. I grew up in Iowa, which has roughly similar climate to here, but when I lived in Richmond, VA, they’d close down the whole city over it simply being too cold, too hot, too rainy, and maybe 3 inches of snow. Weather babies, if you ask me. Institutionally-speaking, you see some clear differences in this area about the “to close or not close” question: WCC and UM-Dearborn closed today; EMU, which closes for weather about once every two or three years, didn’t; and U of M, as far as I know, never EVER closes because of weather. Different cultures, I suppose.
Anyway, I’m with you Patrick in still wanting to know how they figure it out here.
I guess I look at it from the students’ perspective. On any given day, a student will walk ALL over campus…different buildings, different times – either from a residence hall, parking lot, or somewhat closeby apartment. This morning, when I drove in to campus around 9, the Physical plant had mostly cleared the roads, parking lots, and some major walkways around campus, but it was snowing so hard that it did little good – they didn’t stay all that clear for very long…mostly it just got icy instead of snowy. I was slipping and sliding in my car, and then walking – slowly – and slipping up the hills of campus. Thankfully, the lot by my office had spaces in it, but when you’re walking a good distance from the parking lot to a building, it can be both inconvenient and dangerous. That’s not to mention the students that live within “walking distance” of campus – the Ypsi slumlords sure weren’t out clearing the sidewalks. I saw most students coming from off campus walking in the streets – again, not the safest if you ask me.
Now, leaving Feb. 10 out of it, I don’t necessarily think it was wise for the University to be open today. In addition to someone being hurt because they didn’t want to miss class, imagine the news headlines if one of those students walking in the street got hit by a car! Or if someone slipped and fell on campus and broke an arm or leg! We’ve been blessedly free of negative publicity for a while – let’s keep our students and our reputation safe.
I don’t envy the person who has the final say about closing school or not. I went to high school up north, where they still get way more snow than down here. Our school’s superintendent had/has the final say on closing or remaining open and one day in March of ’97, he kept the school open despite us getting 9-10 inches of snow dumped on us by noon.
Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of parents were angry at the sup, a few tiny voices of dissent advised that at 6 am, there wasn’t any snow on the ground, and that’s the time he/she has to make the decision because that’s when the school buses have to leave to start picking students up.
I suspect Susan Martin was probably in a similar damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t predicament this morning.
The North Central Association likes to see guidelines and similarities between its member institutions. While it’s not carved in stone, a one credit hour class typically meets for 800 instructional minutes. A three credit hour class would meet for 2400 instructional minutes, giving us the three 50-minute meetings per week for 16 weeks model.
A Wednesday snow day followed by a Monday snow day would subtract 100 minutes from the “required” minimum of 2400 instructional minutes. I just did a quick count of MWF meeting days for WI 2010 and come up with 39 class sessions for 1950 instructional minutes plus the final for a little over 2000 but far shy of 2400 instructional minutes.
Probably something EMU doesn’t want North Central to look at too closely this fall. I’m sure that someone somewhere within the Magic Kingdom redefined something to make it look like our students are getting a full three credit hour class instead of the 5/6 of a class they’re actually getting. That would be consistent with the “X% of students live within Y miles of campus thus we are a residential campus, not a commuter campus” craziness.
Some years back we were giving out degrees in programs that didn’t exist except as placeholders in a computer program used for institutional reporting. The placeholders looked as if they were real programs when using ISIS *shudder* and, even though these programs were never in one of our catalogs, advisers soon made up their own advising sheets “to do a better job” of advising and graduating students in these illegitimate programs.
You might be right, aginghippie, and that isn’t way out of line to me– that is, we already used our snow day on 2/10, so like it or not, that’s it. An administrator-type told me that the rumor this person had heard is that there was concern about how snow-cleared the parking lots and sidewalks and such were on 2/10, while it wasn’t a concern 2/22. That could be it too.
16 week semester?