Worried about not having enough time to play in the snow, countless universities cancel classes.
As January comes to its end, school officials across the nation have closed universities due to their worry that they won’t get enough time to play in the snow.
“Yale University will be closed this Thursday because of a Level 3 Snow Emergency. Dining halls, emergency offices and postal services will remain open,” one email read.
“We totally made up those ‘level whatever emergencies’ and all that,” President Peter Salovey of Yale University told reporters. “It’s basically a scale of how important it is to us to be able to make snow angels versus the education of our students. Most of the time, the priority goes to the snow angels.”
“It’s not inherently dangerous at all,” Executive Vice President Katherine N. Lapp of Harvard University said. “I mean, since when has snow ever hurt anyone? It’s just white and fluffy stuff. But as long as people think there’s an emergency, we get more time to make snowmen and build forts outside for our faculty snowball fights.”
When asked about the prioritization of student education, it was ranked at an unsurprisingly low average of No. 14 by universities across the nation, with popular higher priorities including student fees, maintaining subpar dining quality, limiting the job market and, of course, holding faculty snowball fights.
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“It’s much more important to me,” one school representative said in a recent interview explaining the low prioritization of student education, “that a student is punished for drinking alcohol or for not fully paying their tuition in time than it is important for them to safely finish their education in four years. I mean, it’s only reasonable that way. We have to be tough. We have to crack down on these vicious nonviolent crimes, and if that means making it even harder to get a proper four-year education by placing suspensions or registration holds, that’s what we have to do. There’s no room for mistakes.”
Many universities hold these same policies, allowing for a lenient “snow day” to take a day off of classes and allow for a day of fun in the snow.
“As long as we make these things seem much more dangerous than they are,” another representative said, “then, we can use them to our advantage. Level 3 Snow Emergency sounds scary, but really it just means a few inches of snow on the ground and maybe a light breeze.”
However, for other parts of the country, schools like Arizona State University have to count down until they can safely close the school down for heat warnings to watch a movie with air conditioning.
Marco Omta is a freshman studying music production. How do you think President Roderick McDavis would do in a snowball fight? Email Marco at mo183714@ohio.edu.
