On President’s Day Weekend, the East Coast once again fell victim to a massive snowstorm. Many cities in the Northeast recorded two feet of snow or more. Here in Troy, we got our fair share starting Monday morning before noon. We received about a foot of snow by Tuesday morning. I, like many others, thought that RPI would be closed on Tuesday. Other colleges, such as SUNY Albany, were announcing they were closed as early as Monday night. Thus, you could imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning and listened to the radio to find that RPI was open for business. Here is why I believe that decision should have never been made.

I’ve lived in the Northeast all my life, so I’ve been through my fair share of snowstorms and “snow days.” Normally, a school will see how the road conditions are around 5 am or so on the date in question. If the roads are in decent shape, they will remain open. This was probably the only reasoning behind RPI’s decision to remain open, since the roads were passable around that time. However, to every rule there is an exception, and this case is certainly one of them.

I have found that many students at RPI go home on the weekend, and even more go home on the two three-day weekends we have each semester. Many of those students live on the East Coast—in Connecticut, near Boston or New York City, in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, etc. All of these locations were buried in snow on Monday—some even on Sunday—and any student who had gone home to any of those places had little chance to make it back to campus on Tuesday. In addition, if anyone flew home for the long weekend, it was even more difficult for them to get back in time, since most airports on the East Coast had closed—and many flights into Albany come from airports on the East Coast. Add this to the students who lived off-campus and were responsible for digging themselves out—especially if they had a morning class, this might have been difficult—and the decision should have been clear to give all students who had not yet returned to campus an extra day to get back.

This sensible reasoning, however, was overlooked by those in charge of making the decision to keep campus open. Thus, many students, faculty, and staff, were hard-pressed to make it back in time for their classes on Tuesday—if they were able to make it back at all. Two years ago, we had two full snow days, and two other days when classes were cancelled early. Professors and students alike worked around the inconvenience with no major problems. I don’t think one snow day this year would have been a huge problem. Then again, maybe RPI figured if we could graduate in a snowstorm, we could have classes in one too.

Scott Hill