Major mid-Michigan school districts, like Lansing School District and East Lansing Public Schools, made early announcements Thursday that schools would be closed due to the Arctic weather.
Michigan State University, however, did the opposite, announcing Thursday evening that it would “maintain the regular schedule of classes, scheduled events and campus operations through the weekend” in an email to the community.
Although the email included a list of cold weather safety tips and he instruction to contact instructors if unable to attend class, it did not explain why the MSU Department of Police and Public Safety chose to carry on business as usual despite the series of severe weather alerts issued.
MSU Police Chief Mike Yankowski told WKAR that the university weighs many factors when deciding whether to modify operations in the winter:
- Rate and amount of snowfall
- Wind speed
- Wind chills colder than –25 degrees for three consecutive hours
- Michigan calling a state of emergency
- Other Big Ten universities modifying operations
“The campus has only modified operations a total of seven times,” Yankowski said. “Some of those examples were 26 inches of snow, 15 inches of snow, 24 inches of snow. And some of these classes were just suspended.”
While not cancelling classes or moving things online, Yankowski said the university has been making an effort to educate students on what they’d need to get through a Michigan winter since orientation day.
Senior computer engineering student Ethan White said he was born and raised in Michigan, so he was well-prepared for the Arctic plunge. However, he said he thinks MSU overestimated how many students would be similarly prepared.
“I mean, it’s absolutely livable and workable if you have the gear,” he said,” but I’m not sure how many people have that. I've definitely seen a lot of people suffering.”
White said the coldest part of his day was his bike ride to his 8 o'clock lecture.
For freshman hospitality business student Keshav Goyal, the coldest part of the day was the walk from his bus stop to class.
“I think they should have switched it online,” Goyal said. “Labs should have been cancelled. They could have just had online classes, because we did have that during COVID.”
Some instructors, like assistant professor Elizabeth Gardner, did move their lectures online.
Gardner works in the department of food science and human nutrition. She said she would have preferred an in-person class, but her students’ safety was more important.
“At 8 o'clock in the morning, it’s still dark out. There’s black ice,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how the roads were going to be, and I also wasn’t sure how actually campus was going to be because when the temperatures get that low, salt doesn’t work.”
Yankowski said the university told professors that they were welcome to hold classes online if they were able.
“It always comes down to individuals making sure that if they feel like going out into the elements is not safe, that they make the proper choice for them,” he said.
Yankowski added that it would be unlikely for the campus as a whole to close due to severe weather.
“We are a city in a city,” he said. “Campus never closes down, and it can't close down because we have students that live here. They live here, they eat here. We have to be able to provide those facilities for our students.”
