There's no business like snow business

The snow day on Wednesday — the first since 2003 — allowed students to play in the snow or relax in their rooms instead of going to class.

Though the University originally intended to make the announcement about school cancellation in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the decision was released at around 7:45 p.m. on Tuesday.

“We wanted to be well coordinated with the city,” Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli wrote in a statement. “In addition we looked at the actions of other regional college and universities and most importantly the forecast and felt the safest approach for the majority of the Penn community was to communicate early.”

As of 12:15 a.m. Thursday, 14 inches of snow had fallen on Philadelphia. In addition to the 28.5 inches that fell on Friday and Saturday, this means this winter has surpassed the 65.5-inch total set in 1995-6, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Most other colleges in the Mid-Atlantic region, including Princeton University, St. Joseph’s University, Temple University, Villanova University, George Washington University, Fordham University and the University of Pittsburgh, were also shut down on Wednesday.

Columbia University did not close until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, so most students still had to attend classes.

While some Penn students spent the day catching up on school work, others played outside.

“We got wasted and went sledding and then did some hard core snow ball fighting outside the high rises,” a College sophomore, who preferred to remain anonymous, said.

A group of freshmen constructed a snowball over five feet in diameter in the Quad.

“First I thought it was a fire hazard, and then I remembered it was made of snow, so, like, snow counteracts fire,” College sophomore John O’Malley said about the snowball.

Many students expressed concern about getting around campus for the rest of the week, given the accumulation of snow on sidewalks and roads.

“We handle snow removal between the Schuylkill River to 41st Street, from the School of Medicine buildings to Chestnut Street only,” Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Services Anne Papageorge wrote in a statement. “Penn is responsible for the maintenance of over 1.3 million square ft of walkways and the campus parking lots.”

Facilities has 25 snow blowers, five gators with plows and spreaders, five trucks with plows and salt spreaders, one tractor with a broom, several smaller machines with brooms and “many” shovels at its disposal, according to Papageorge.

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