As many of you know, we recently received quite a bit of snow for our area. When having snow in the forecast, those of us in school are usually hopeful for a snow day, or at least a compressed schedule. 

As we saw snowflakes falling from the sky and covering the roads, I am sure I wasn’t the only one hoping for the first full day campus cancellation of the semester. However, on Feb. 13 at 5:45 a.m, students received a message saying that we were starting classes at noon. This was obviously a shock, considering I do not know anybody on campus who has ever experienced a noon start to classes. 

Since it was a noon start, all of our morning classes were either canceled or put on a Zoom call. For the classes in the afternoon, many professors had the choice of keeping their classes going on as normal, having an online instruction day or being canceled completely. For myself, my afternoon class went on as normal, and I still had to drive to campus in the snowy weather. 

That leads to my main point, which is that commuters are typically the ones who have to suffer the most when it comes to campus closures or delays. Being a commuter myself, I have had my fair share of waking up early, getting ready for class, driving to campus and then getting an email or text message saying my class was canceled or delayed. 

Since about half of the students here at Wilkes are commuters, I still find it quite shocking on the university’s end that they don’t really seem interested in keeping their students safe, especially in hazardous driving conditions like we experienced this past week. As for myself, I am grateful for not living that far away from campus, so driving on the roads is not bad for me. 

However, when we are considering the entire commuter population here on campus, there are so many other students here on campus that live further away than I do. I personally know some students on campus that commute to school every day and they live more than 45 minutes away from campus. 

So, when the school announces that they are still having class at a time like 12 p.m., it directly affects commuters and is risking their safety by having them drive on the roads, especially when they live farther away from campus. This then makes commuters at this school question if going to class is worth risking both their lives and cars in the snow. So, even if their class was not canceled originally, they are still missing a day of class since the school decided not to cancel in the first place. 

Students have discussed this matter multiple times, whether it was to the school, with our peers or just to ourselves, but it is no secret that this needs to change in order for the commuter population on this campus to feel like they are included in the campus community and that their safety is at top priority to the campus administrators.