Administrators shut down the Ohio State campus Wednesday for the first time since March 8, 2008.
Academic Affairs, Transportation & Parking, University Police, Student Life, and Facilities Operations and Development made the collective decision around midnight Tuesday to cancel classes, a rare verdict. OSU has canceled classes just six times in the last 25 years.
"The decision to cancel classes at Ohio State is never done lightly," said Jim Lynch, OSU director of media relations. "In this case, the heavy ice and early morning snow would have made it very difficult for faculty, staff and students to make it to class safely."
Lynch said the university excelled in communicating to students and faculty that the campus was closed.
"This may be the best teamwork and internal communications I've ever seen at Ohio State when it comes to a weather-related closing," he said. "They gave regular, detailed updates early and often of what's going on everywhere."
There was one major accident on Tuesday before the full force of the storm hit, said OSU Police Chief Paul Denton.
"We had one last evening that was a major accident," he said. The crash occurred at 3:15 p.m. on Woody Hayes Drive. Denton said no one was hurt, but the car was totaled.
Of all of the campus libraries, only the Science and Engineering Library remained open. Joseph Branin, director of library systems, said he wanted to keep one library open for students who wanted to spend the off-day focusing on academics.
"Because there are a lot of students on campus, we want to try to keep a library open even when the university is closed," he said. "The Science and Engineering Library is our largest library, so we thought if we could only keep one open, it would be that one." The student assistants kept count of the amount of people who came in. There were more than 174 students in the library at 3 p.m. and Julian Valencia, a library assistant, said the number had been growing every hour.
"I thought for sure that there would hardly be anyone here," Valencia said. "But I guess a lot of people decided to spend the day studying." Outside on the South Oval, students used cafeteria trays, blocks of wood and garbage can lids to sled down hills near Mirror Lake. There were also multiple games of "snow football" on the Oval, which many students played for hours.
Kenny Greer/THE LANTERN
Todd Kunze, a freshman in mechanical engineering, grinds and jumps off the back porch of the Faculty Club's building. It was like high school again for Ohio State students as many went sledding, snowboarding, had snow ball fights and played football during OSU's first snow day in two years.
"People say I'm crazy for being out in the freezing cold, but it's my first snow day and I'm going to take full advantage of it," said Jenny Choi, a sophomore in psychology.
Frozen power lines caused power outages throughout the state, and 5,836 people were without power in Franklin county at 3 p.m. yesterday, according to AEP Ohio.
Most dining services remained open, although The Marketplace at Neil suffered a brief power outage, assistant manager Nick Wortman said.
"We had to turn away our food delivery order," he said. "We couldn't accept the order because we didn't have electricity. We didn't want to open our refrigerators and let out the cold air."
Marketplace's coffee shop, Street Sweets, had opened at its regular 7:00 a.m. start. The power outage caused the other stations to open between 10:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. instead of 10:00 a.m.
At Buckeye Express in Baker Hall, student manager Erica Austin said she was called to work on her day off because more than six employees did not show up. She said the low number of staff workers posed a major problem during lunch time. "Crowds of students came in from noon on out and we had to multitask to the utmost," Austin said. "It was so stressful." Other students said the snow day was relaxing and gave them time to sleep, hang with friends and work out.
Many of the gyms were packed, and students said they stayed longer than usual. "As soon as I got the word of class canceled, I increased my workout and stayed till 2 a.m.," said Malcolm Cooper, a senior in music performance. More students found fortune with the bad weather because anyone with a BuckID could receive a free ticket to attend the men's basketball game against Michigan, according to the OSU Web site. "I would normally not go because of the high ticket prices, but was so excited to see the team play even if I had to go in the snow," said Justin Parsons, a senior in strategic communicatons.
Zack Meisel can be reached at meisel.14@osu.edu.
Heather Hope can be reached at hope.27@osu.edu.
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