Four IUS Physical Plant employees voluntarily stayed overnight on campus after ice and snow blanketed the area on Jan. 27 and 28. The storms left thousands without power, causing millions of dollars in damage and caused the longest class cancellation since 1994.
John Brendle, Matt Rochner, Don Schweitzer and John Smith slept on mattresses and pads in the break area at the Physical Plant for two nights to ensure that cleanup operations.
Smith, a business management freshman who returned in December from a deployment to Iraq said he was used to living in abnormal conditions and decided to stay instead of fighting the weather getting to and from campus.
“The living conditions were austere at best,” he said. “But we wanted to make sure that the roads and walkways were safe for students.”
Physical Plant maintains a staff of eight to 10 personnel who worked eight to 12 hour days using a one-ton pickup truck with a plow, a backhoe and tractors with plows to remove snow and ice from the walking paths and parking lots.
The addition of the residence halls posed an additional challenge to the Physical Plant staff. The presence of vehicles make it difficult to completely remove snow and ice from the parking lots and the vehicles themselves pack the snow and ice down making it harder to effectively use the plows.
That did not prevent cleanup operations from continuing, however.
Relying only on their staff and the tools at their disposal, the campus was completely plowed after both storm systems without the help of any outsourced labor.
“I am truly blessed that I have such a dedicated department,” Bob Snip, Physical Plant director, said. “They neglected their homes to spend all of their time out here. If you went to their house, their driveways weren’t shoveled.”
When inclement weather hits the local area, Bob Snip and IUS Police Chief Dennis Simon report the conditions of the campus and surrounding area to Gilbert Atnip, vice chancellor of academic affairs, who then makes recommendations to the chancellor, Sandra Patterson-Randles.
“Basically, I use my best judgment with the information that I have that’s most likely the best scenario and then I call the chancellor,” Atnip said. “It’s usually at 5:30 in the morning. She really likes that.”
After receiving authorization from the chancellor to cancel or delay class, Atnip contacts local TV stations and informs them of the situation.
Louisville news station WLKY reported IU Southeast was closed Jan. 29 before the official decision had been made.
Atnip contacted the newsroom because there was consideration on resuming classes on that day.
“I said, ‘I understand you guys are reporting that we’re closed tomorrow but we haven’t made that decision yet,’” he said. “Then of course we ended up being closed so it didn’t really hurt anybody.”
When the decision to cancel or delay classes is made, the University Police activate the university emergency alert system IU Notify, update the university’s weather phone line and update the status of the campus on the IUS homepage.
IU Notify is a system that contacts subscribers through e-mails, text messages and phone calls informing them of the situation at the campus.
“Of the approximately 9,000 customers in the system, we had a 91 percent contact rate,” Simon said.
The system also acquired four additional customers and had hundreds more update their contact information during the winter storms.
Even though the Physical Plant employees had the campus parking lots and travel paths cleared of snow and ice by the morning of Jan. 29, making it safe for students to travel on and around the campus, classes were still cancelled or delayed until Jan. 31.
The decision to continue cancelling classes had nothing to do with the state of the campus but rather the conditions in the surrounding areas where commuter students would be travelling from.
“There was still a state of emergency in Floyd County and all the counties around the area,” Atnip said. “We decided it was best not to put additional pressure on people to come to work or school.”
The recommencement of classes on Feb. 2 — while thousands remained without power and numerous roads were still covered with ice—was due in part to the fact that cancelling classes until every inch of ice had melted away was impractical.
“If the campus is OK and the area around us is OK and the interstates and roads are pretty clear, we’ll generally be open,” Atnip said.
The Academic Policies Committee discussed the possibility of extending the semester to account for the snow days at their meeting on Feb. 3.
The consensus was that the faculty has adjusted—or would adjust—to the cancelled classes and that an extension of the semester was unnecessary.
By TRAVIS STURGILL
Staff Writer
trsturgi@ius.edu