Snowpacalypse: Or, how Holy Cross is invicible when it comes to snow

Growing up in Georgia, snow days were a bit of a rarity. Instead, we had “hot days” – seriously, sometimes it’d be so humid that we wouldn’t have classes due to fear of overheating students. Even if there was a threat of snow, my sister and I would wake up extremely early just to see if school was canceled. Eight times out of ten, it wasn’t. Then there’d be the off-chance that it did snow and the roads were somewhat bad, so the school declared that if you couldn’t drive, then you would receive an excused absence. Since my parents know how to drive in the real snow, we always went to school when that situation occurred. But then there was the beautiful one-in-a-million chance that you would get that elusive and coveted snow day – albeit due to one inch of snow. If school ever closed, then everything – and I mean everything – shut down.

Now, since I’m at a school in Worcester, MA (aka the snow capital of Massachusetts), you would think that I would finally get to enjoy those snow days that were stolen from me in my youth. Besides, we’re on a hill, aren’t we? Hills + snow = tricky! So when Assumption cancels classes, you might anticipate that Holy Cross would cancel classes. Wrong. In my four years here, despite the snow drifts being taller than me sometimes (and I”m not exaggerating), I have never had an officially sanctioned snow day. The grounds crew are always out extremely early so that the roads and stairs are plowed, and HC Dining actually has an emergency staff that is prepared to sleep in Kimball so that students have food, even in extreme weather emergencies. Holy Cross’ invincibility also extends to its professors – no matter how icy or snowy the roads are, I have never had a professor cancel class due to snow. Frankly, I find this remarkable. And now, even as we’re gearing up for the Snowpacalypse, classes are still going, professors are still here, and I’m still expected to report to Kimball at 6:45 a.m. If this happened in Georgia (as it did toward the end of my break…well, a much less intense version), we wouldn’t have school for the next week or so. But everything is still going – we’re all still walking to classes, Kimball, and Hogan. My Northern friends seem completely unphased by all of this, but this is incredible to me – no runs to Price Chopper for bread and milk. What comes down as white puffy flakes must melt, right?

This is what Kimball Quad looked like at 10:30 this morning. Suffice to say, I won’t be wearing the outfit below to any outside performances soon:

Check back tomorrow for more pictures of Snowpacalypse ’11. I plan on documenting it through a slideshow to show my Southern friends how to truly handle snow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 5:30 pm and is filed under On Campus News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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