The Moose covered in melting snow post polar vortex – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
By Ashlyn Armock, Aquinas Reporter
Aquinas college has specific guidelines for campus-wide days off, which includes the exclusion of students in weekly night classes having the day off.
The standard at Aquinas for students taking night classes is that attendance is required, even on federal holidays. Due to the requirement of hours that students have to participate in their classes, classes being cancelled can be a tricky situation. The college’s goal is to give students what they paid for, which in this case, would be to get the amount of hours in class. Missing a once a week class could also be catastrophic for some classes, given the amount of material covered throughout the class.
The weather is something that the school cannot control though so it is much more likely classes will be cancelled for inclement weather rather than for a federal holiday. However, with students experiencing the effects of an average temperature of 4.7 degrees and -27 degree wind chill across campus, many were extremely disappointed to have their night classes on Wednesday.
Students like Kerrigan Smedley and Anna O’Neill were both very disappointed in the lack of night class cancellations on Wednesday.
“If my night class was on Wednesday, I would like to be able to enjoy my evening off like everyone else on campus who got the day off,” commented Smedley.
“It was a little annoying because I wasn’t planning on having class given the weather but then because they reopened campus I still had to then show up at 6 p.m. for my class. I had to drive through the snow and the ice in the dark and then drive back home in the same conditions.” O’Neill said.
Other students also were disappointed in the rules regarding federal holidays. “I think a federal holiday is the entire day and so why would you only celebrate part of the day? It is not any students’ fault that their night class is scheduled on that day, so why should they have to go just because they are unfortunate enough to be stuck with that class time.” said sophomore Mary Kampe.
Entrance of the Art & Music Center buried in snow – Photo by Joel Grimsely
Although some students do understand the point that the school is trying to make. “I am personally very invested in my class. Also because you meet a lot less with night classes, a lot of the time only once a week, I would be down for us still having class.” remarked Kiera Troost on the night class quandary.
“It is nice having class once a week, so I really love my night class. I also think it is fair to still have night classes on snow days, because the weather changes so quickly. There might be heavy snow in the morning but not in the evening,” said junior Aquinas student Johnny Vanderbaan.
Overall, Aquinas has an important job of balancing student safety and staying in compliance with class requirements. But for many of the night class students it feels unfair to be the only students in class for the day. Whether Aquinas should address these disparities for future snow days and national holidays is of great interest to many of the night class students.
The Saint 