We have had some significant weather over the past few days. I have only lived in Kansas for about 22 years, and I have never had an emergency alert on my phone that the highways were closing. As luck would have it, I was communicating with the vice presidents of NCCC about the possibility of closing the college for safety reasons when the very loud alert went off with the phone in my hand. I jumped, of course, and after I calmed my heart down, the VPs closed the college. The alert made for an easier decision, but it’s never an easy decision.
When I was a kid, I LOVED snow days. And, I had the inside scoop on that situation! My mom was the principal’s secretary of our high school. Once the school administration made the decision to close for the day, the first person they called was my mom. She, then, was responsible for calling all the TV and radio stations to let them know we were closed. That made me the first kid in town to know we were closing!
I would be so excited at 5:30 a.m. or so when I heard the phone ring on a snowy morning. Often, I could not go back to sleep I was so excited. It meant a day of fun with snowball fights, snow ice cream, and building snow men. It was pure joy.
It was also my first test of ethics. Today computer systems and log ins are used to make sure closure announcements are legitimate and not a false call. But this was pre-internet, so Mom kept a typed list of all the numbers she had to call, including the yearly secret passwords for each station. You had to give the password to the person on the other end of the line and then say what school district is closing. I knew all the passwords! And I never told a soul. Think about what shenanigans naughty kids could do with those passwords.
In the Inbody household, the girls would wear their pajamas inside-out on nights when a snow day was possible. As we all know, if enough kids wear their pajamas inside-out, the snow day is pretty much guaranteed. I have also heard that putting a spoon under your pillow works, as does flushing ice cubes down the toilet, putting a penny in the freezer, throwing ice cubes in the front yard, putting a white crayon in the freezer, and, my favorite, eating ice cream for dinner.
Now, as President, snow days are truly a mixed bag. We don’t let the complaints about our decision drive our thinking. You see, we get complaints if we don’t close, and we get complaints when we do close. Personally, I don’t get the pure joy of a day off anymore. While spending a day with my family during a snow day is still appealing, it can be a mess to close. Closing means canceling events and interrupting things like finals week and class schedules, or community events like games and concerts or plays, not to mention civic organization meetings, Thursday Senior Lunch, etc. A lot happens on campus on any given day.
At Chanute, we still have to clean some of the sidewalks and parking lots even if it is snowing. We are a residential campus, so our students need to be able to get to the dining hall and the workers have to be able to get in to make the meals during snow days.
Of course, classes are cancelled — except when they are not. Online and most hybrid classes go on no matter what (unless it’s an in-person day for hybrid classes). Since our classes are web-enhanced, a lot of the material is online even if it is a face-to-face class, and some students use the opportunity to catch up on their work. My daughter just graduated from K-State and the rule there was class goes on even if the campus is closed. It just goes online that day. Unfortunately, not all our students have high-speed internet access or even a laptop sometimes, so we can’t do that. But it means that instructors must adjust their class calendars to make up the lost time.
Here is a snow day war story for you. When I was an instructor at a college in Oklahoma, we had a huge snowstorm during finals week with 12-16 inches of snowfall. I received a call from the President who asked if I still lived a block from campus. I did, right behind the President’s House. He asked me to open the auditorium and offer finals to the students who lived on campus. So, I trekked through the snow, got into the faculty work room where the finals were copied and ready to go for the day, and brought them to the auditorium. Armed with class rosters and checking IDs for test security, I gave finals to hundreds of students for dozens of classes. That was quite the experience. Finals week must go on!
The vice presidents make the call at NCCC and consult with me if needed. They drive the roads, check KanDrive (I highly recommend that app, its free and excellent), look at the current and future weather conditions, and talk with the maintenance folks about on-campus safety for sidewalks, parking lots, and sometimes even tree limbs. They try to do this before 5:30 a.m., but often the weather does not cooperate. Sometimes it is just starting to snow or rain ice at 5:00 a.m., so the roads are fine now, but what will it be at 7:45 a.m. when folks are driving to campus? It’s hard to say.
We don’t close on speculation. At least, not anymore. When I was a vice president, I had to make the call with the Vice President of Operations. We saw the weather reports for a “Snowmageddon” and watched as many colleges and school districts closed around us in preparation for this big upcoming event. So, we closed too. We got one inch of snow. The President was not happy with us. Now, we wait to see if it materializes. It’s Kansas and things change rapidly. As Will Rogers said about Oklahoma, if you don’t like Kansas’ weather, wait a minute.
I have been at colleges that, no matter the weather, were proud of the “We never close” mentality. I can tell you that is just a mess itself. What happens at that college is that a student battles their way to campus at 10 miles an hour, only to find that their instructors all cancelled their individual classes for the day. Now they are livid as you can imagine. So, only a few classes happen even if you were not closed, and attendance is terrible. How much learning really happened? The events are often cancelled anyway as the visiting team won’t come, or the crowd doesn’t want to come to the play or concert.
Snow days are a mixed bag, but in the end, it is safety that matters the most. If you are open on a snowy or icy day, you run the risk of people getting hurt. It’s a mess to reschedule things for sure, but in the end, it’s just not worth the possibility of some tragedy happening.
Snow closures mean a lot of work to clear sidewalks and parking lots in awful conditions (thank you maintenance department), rescheduling events, changing class schedules, and disappointing some people. However, for me it still elicits warm thoughts of winter fun and stolen days. I can still taste Mom’s snow ice cream.
If you have any comment about this article or anything else about the college, please email me at binbody@neosho.edu.