Students Greeted by Plenty of Snow
Students who came to campus last week were greeted with the year’s first major snowstorm. The recent storm produced about six inches of snow in the Capital Region, affecting some students’ commute to the campus and their classes. “I live 40 minutes away from campus, but it took a lot longer to travel to school today,” said Tyler Yonkers. “I had two classes canceled [Thursday] and we had left early in one of my other classes because only seven students showed up.” “It takes me about 10 minutes to get to class, but because of the snow, it took me about 30 minutes to get here [Thursday],” said Ally Tricomi. Sarah O’Shea, freshman Fine Arts, said, “It usually takes about 15 minutes to drive to campus. However, due to the snow, it took me 35 minutes.”
Other students weren’t as affected by the weather, like Jason Vanacker, senior CAD major. “The snow doesn’t affect me cause I don’t drive to school. My father usually drives me.” “I was stuck in traffic for a little while,” said Alyssa Farley, freshman Business Marketing, “but I live right by the school and made it in alright.” Marc Sousa, senior Business Administration said he wasn’t happy about last week’s snowfall. “I despise the snow and I hate this weather,” said Sousa. “I wouldn’t have come to class today if it wasn’t for this [Microeconomics] exam. They should have canceled school.” “I think it’s ridiculous that we had school,” said Lisa Lavery, senior Dental Hygiene. “It’s a commuter school, why would they still have classes in this weather?” Yonkers said, “[The college] should have canceled classes because we’re not used to driving in the snow due to the mild winter and not a lot of people are here.” “I’ve never made a decision to keep the college open where I’ve never gotten complaints,” said College President, Drew Matonak.
Matonak said that he, along with a committee of officials, decided that it was okay to keep the college open during the storm. “I had to make the best decision for the entire collegecommunity,” said Matonak. “In this case, I never got a telephone call [from committee members] and thought it was okay to stay open.” According to Matonak, the committee headed by Jim LaGatta, the college’s Vice President of Administration, examines various weather reports and contacts state and county officials in the Capital Region to gauge whether weather and road conditions permit safe travel to the HVCC campus. If weather conditions are significant enough, the committee will contact Matonak and he will make a decision on whether to keep the college open or if classes will have a delayed start time.
The college president said, “It’s always a crapshoot to figure out whether to keep campus open or not, but we try to err on the side of safety when it comes to making this decision.”
Matonak said that while the college tries to make decisions that are in the interests of the whole campus community, he understood that students would make their own choice on whether they would come to classes based a variety of issues, regardless of the college’s decision that day. “We’re serving adults [at HVCC] and adults can make decisions [on whether to attend classes] based on their own travel conditions or issues,” said the college president.