Wisconsin winters are snowy and cold and there is no way around them. Students year and year again wait eagerly by radios and television sets in hopes of a school cancellation due to inclement weather.
However, during most of University of Wisconsin students’ careers at college, snow days are a rare occurrence — extremely rare.
In fact, since UW opened in 1849, classes have been cancelled only twice. Once during blizzard-like conditions in the March of 1969 and the other Dec. 3, 1990, when 17 inches of snow fell in the span of 12 to 16 hours.
“It takes a lot of snow to slow this place down,” UW spokesman John Lucas said.
Lucas said cancellations of classes depends on the discretion of the chancellor, John Wiley.
“[Cancellations] are all really based on the safety and welfare of students and staff,” Lucas said.
Weather poses a slightly lower risk at colleges than at high schools, since most college students usually walk to class instead of driving. However, many faculty and staff members must drive to Madison’s Isthmus in order to make it to work. If a UW employee cannot make it due to nasty roads and bad weather, and work was not cancelled for the day, he or she must take a vacation day under the Inclement Weather Guidelines.
James Lang, a recent UW graduate, attended high school in the Washington, D.C., area and said his high-school classes got cancelled all the time even if it did not snow.
“They preemptively cancelled class if there was a snow warning the night before,” Lang said, adding that on multiple occasions no accumulation occurred. Although Lang knew Wisconsin has a reputation for being cold and snowy, he said he did not appreciate going to lectures when weather was at its worst.
“I remember when I was a freshman, I was walking to class when it snowed 12 inches and was 25 degrees below zero. I was aghast,” Lang said. He added that students do not always have to go to lecture, because attendance is not checked and getting class notes is not a problem. “But it does kind of suck for the professors.”
Lang said most students do not check radio broadcasts before they hoof it off to class, meaning students never have the chance to hear if they do not have to make it to the classrooms.
“Half the kids would be walking, and, if classes were cancelled, you would end up with a bunch of pissed-off kids,” Lang said.
Though UW has not cancelled school in more than a decade, this is not the case for University of Minnesota-Duluth students. Jesse Rangel, a freshman at UMD, said his classes were cancelled once this academic year when about 24 inches of snow dumped on the Lake Superior-bordering town.
“It was kind of weird [classes were cancelled],” Rangel said, because many academic buildings are connected by a network of tunnels. Rangel rationalized the cancellation because many students live off campus.
Similar to hospital, clinic, police and power-plant employees, some UW employees must come to work for the day even if classes are cancelled.
