Andrew Frosceno
Special to the Southern News
Students at Southern are being affected by the record-breaking snowfall Connecticut has seen this winter. Southern is widely considered a commuter school and with all the snowfall this winter, students are finding it difficult to make it to class.
Alyssa Diglio, a junior liberal studies major, commutes to class daily from her home in East Haven. She finds that on days like last Tuesday and Wednesday, it may be best to stay home.
“If I feel that I can’t get to school safely, I simply won’t come,” Diglio said. “If a teacher cannot understand that, then oh well.”
Other commuter students aren’t as concerned with their safety but more with getting the best bang for their buck and not missing too much time in the classroom.
Krista Gargano, a sophomore graphic design major, believes that if she can’t afford an absence she’ll try her best to get to school.
“Normally, I always want to attend my classes, despite what the weather may be doing,” Gargano said.
With the storms Connecticut has seen this winter, Gargano said she knows it’s probably best to stay home sometimes if possible.
“My dad works for the state and he tells me how the roads are, and if he says they are really bad, I check my syllabuses for attendance policies to see if I can afford an absence and stay home,” Gargano said.
In the first week back to school, students like Gargano and Diglio have had to make decisions about whether to venture out to class or not. This winter has been like something Connecticut residents have never seen before. In fact, it is. According to the WFSB website, the National Weather Service said this is the most snowfall in any month on record in Connecticut.
With that in mind, it’s a challenge to keep students in the classroom, which is making it hard on administrators to make the decision to delay or cancel classes. Some decisions made have irked Jen Saksa, a sophomore public health major, who said she believes there should have been a delay on Tuesday morning.
“I think on Tuesday there should have been a delay so they could finish clearing the snow out,” Saksa said.
After Tuesday’s batch of winter weather, Mother Nature brought along another round for Wednesday, dropping snow all day. leading to the decision to shut the campus down at noon.
“In my opinion, school should have been closed the entire day on Wednesday,” Saksa said. “The roads were not clear enough for the majority of the school to travel on.”
Saksa, however, said she didn’t even make it to school on Wednesday.
“I was going to class because I did not want to miss a day already, and about 10 minutes from my house, my car fishtailed and the front of my car ended up in a snow bank on the opposite side of the road in the opposite direction,” Saksa said.
Less than a week into the spring semester, the winter weather has left the administrators with tough decisions about losing classroom hours. With more than a month of winter left, students may have even more days like last week.
Oh and lets not forget how we became the last school to close while ccsu, ecsu and wcsu either closed or delayed opening. The only problem is no one is looking out for commute students safety and the safety of the residential students coming to class