Blizzard forces U. to call off classes

With thousands of students stuck in airports or at home because of bad weather conditions, the University cancelled classes yesterday for the first time in a decade. The move was in response to the weekend's massive late-winter blizzard that blanketed the nation, dumping about a foot of snow, ice and slush on the University and surroundings. And as area roads became impassable, Escort Service shut down, local businesses closed their doors, and students struggled to get back to campus. The University received about 11,000 telephone calls on Sunday from students and parents wondering if school was going to be in session, Acting Executive Vice President John Gould said yesterday. Gould said classes were called off yesterday because students were stranded across the nation with no way to get back to the University, noting that local highways including I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway were closed. "It was a much more sensible decision to have students return to class when they could actually get to campus," he said. Gould said school would have been in session if students had not been on spring break. For Mike Ferraiolo, the University's superintendent of hard surfaces and athletic grounds, the past three days have been among the most active of the year for his department. He said the clean-up crew consisted of about 40 people on Saturday and 50 on Sunday, adding that the staff used a number of trucks with plows and salt spreaders for the job. "With a snow like this you're trying to keep ahead of it," Ferraiolo said yesterday. "We basically did a pretty good job, but our basic problem was building steps." He explained that the housekeeping staff, which normally handles steps on walkways near residences, was not on duty over the weekend. This made it difficult for the University to clear all pathways. Ferraiolo said he would rate the overall snow removal as "very, very good." But he added that it did not come easy. "It was very hard on Saturday night," he said. "We had winds up to 70 miles an hour. Sunday, it was 14 degrees and very difficult for the people who were just shoveling. We had 10 inches of snow and ice." And although the storm was not as vicious as the one that hit the University and closed its doors in 1983, Ferraiolo said it was "a close second." Escort did not run on Saturday night, and on Sunday, all service stopped at 10 p.m. "The roads were getting increasingly treacherous," Business Services Director Steven Murray said last night. "We couldn't traverse some of the numbered streets -- they were still in horrendous condition." One benefit of the storm was a decrease in area crime. University Police Commissioner John Kuprevich said that "certainly during the period of the snow there were significantly few criminal incidences." Kuprevich added that the police mainly assisted people in getting home and at accident sites. He said many city officials "were concerned about the homeless" and that most homeless people were provided shelter. Students said yesterday that they thought the decision was a good one. "The weather outside was bad and dangerous," said Nursing senior Valerie Allen. "And besides, many of the students couldn't return. Classes would have been half empty and people would have missed out on things." Allen added that half of her roommates would not have been able to attend classes had they been held.

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