“We are really sorry, but in our defense, we even thought that the school would be closed,” Austin Cook, Director of Plowing at the University of Rochester, said in response to student complaints of excess snow on pathways.
College students across campus (not RIT or any other neighboring schools), were found grudgingly walking to class on Tuesday—at least, for the few whose professors stuck to their guns in the “pursuit of furthering knowledge” after the area was blasted with snow. Many students complained that it was not fair of officials to make students sacrifice their safety for an education. Senior Kyle Smith said, “The school was really going for it to try and keep the school open. It was cold, and deep, and dangerous. Also, screw my housemates for not warning me before I left for class.”
Professors were also upset. “I guess if the school really doesn’t want our opinion on whether it is possible to make it to teach,” Prof D’Antona, of the Hypothetical Department, said. “In theory, UR has the power to make the mistake of keeping school open. But hypothetically, I think it’d be a better outcome had we been on the same page. I could see so many better outcomes had we been on the same page.”
Other individuals voiced their frustration to administrators through emails and, more importantly, petitions, which will be viewed by the Students’ Association in order to create change. An anonymous administration source said, “I don’t think we will really look too far into that petition. If we had a critical view of everything that came across our desk, we probably would be having Chris Horgan as Class of 2017 Speaker, or worse, giving students the day off for their religious holidays. I really trust Austin to clear this up in the future.”
When asked what had happened this past week in terms of plowing the roads, sidewalks, and even the parking lots, Cook replied, “I am not really sure; our first mistake may have been trusting that damn groundhog. I guess he really got our hopes up and caused us to ignore things like the weather station. Our second mistake probably had to do with funding issues—a significant part of our budget went to repair the flooding in Gale, which also falls under Facilities.” This left students even more upset.
“But don’t worry, things will change,” he said.“Regardless of the faults in our preparation, we really want to improve for the next snowstorm. We will make sure to really change something up. I think we may ask students to bring shovels along to class.No matter what, we will make sure that the next day the school does not cancel class, even though every other school will, we will have the sidewalks clearer than before. Not totally clear. Meliora stands for ever better, and we strive to improve every time we are tested. With this in mind, being ever best is unrealistic.”
