The first week of classes at Stony Brook were completely thrown off by blizzard Juno. Before it had even started to snow, SBU Alerts sent out a message saying that classes were canceled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning out of caution. The following week classes were canceled on Monday, and again on Tuesday morning. Since students missed so many classes at the very beginning of the semester two make up Monday class days were scheduled on March 6th and March 27th.
What do Stony Brook students say about the havoc over the snow? “I was really excited at first, since my birthday was on Tuesday and I got a day off to celebrate with my friends,” said Shannon O’Connell, 20, a resident at SBU. “But after I got the e-mail about the make-up classes I was bummed out and now I don’t want any more snow days.”
Lakin Williamson, 20, a resident at SBU from Mississippi said, “I love the snow and the cold. I liked the first two snow days, but after that it got a bit excessive.”
Snow days can be nice and relaxing, but since they cancelled the first two days of the semester it threw many students through a loop, especially after being off from school for six weeks.
On the other hand, University at Buffalo, or as it’s known to locals, UB, has a much different approach for dealing with the winter. “This semester we’ve had several big snow storms and days where the wind chill has been around -30 degrees but we’ve had class every day,” said Morgan Crisco, 19, a resident at UB, “A lot of times for morning classes the roads won’t be cleaned up which makes it hard for people living off campus. I don’t think anything would make UB close short of five feet of snow.”
Buffalo is notorious for snow and cold. Those who live in area don’t expect closures very often and know when it’s snowing that the roads are going to be tricky to navigate. On days where it’s -30 degrees it only takes about 15 minutes to get frostbite. When there are thousands of students walking around campus trying to get to class it can be very frustrating and dangerous, especially for those commuting. UB also has two campuses, which are about 4 miles apart. There are buses running constantly between them but students still have to wait outside in the cold for the bus to arrive, or have to drive themselves in harsh conditions to the other campus.
Stephany Maurer, 20, a commuter to UB said, “It’s difficult. Sometimes when it continues to snow throughout the morning the roads won’t be fully plowed and it’s so slippery. There will be cars off to the side that either decided it was too dangerous to keep driving or have slid off the road.”
The system on Long Island is very different compared to the system in Buffalo, since the winter tends to be worse upstate there are more resources available to handle the snow than there are here. Being from the Buffalo suburban area, I have a very different perspective on what bad snow is. What my friends from downstate think is bad I think is average. In Buffalo there needs to be zero visibility and five feet of snow in order to close school. The real question is: is Stony Brook too cautious dealing with the winter, or is Buffalo not cautious enough?
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