Campus lets out two days due to freezing weather
ULM shut down for two-and-half days last week due to this year’s latest winter snow storm.
The polar vortex of last month mostly brought record low temperatures with little precipitation, at least in Monroe. This storm, dubbed Winter Storm Jax, didn’t break any coldest temperature records but brought plenty of freezing rain, sleet and even some snow. Cars had icicles hanging off their grills, tree branches were encased in ice and some areas of campus could only safely be walked over by going at a turtle’s pace.
Tyler Henderson, an undeclared freshman, had notable experience with Jax’s icy wrath.
“Well, the ice was so bad that when I came into the entrance of the dorms I tried to open the gate with my campus ID and the gate was frozen. It was about a 20 second lag before the gate came up. And when the gate did come up, it was bending like it was about to break because of all the ice that was on it,” Henderson said.
The storm, which caused most of campus to close from Tuesday morning to Thursday afternoon, disrupted ULM’s academic schedule.
“It was stressful. I had 3 tests that got pushed back so now I have work next week. It messed up the syllabus,” junior speech language pathology major, Reghan Orman said.
However Eric Pani, Vice President of Academic Affairs, is confident in the faculty’s ability to adjust their schedule due to the winter storm.
“Because of the unique nature of each course, ULM faculty members have the latitude to determine how best to make up for the class time missed because of the ice storm. Faculty members will work with their students on a course-by-course basis and develop a strategy that is effective for achieving course goals,” Pani said.
While the storm didn’t cause any damage at ULM, other parts of the U.S. were less fortunate. The storm, which was forecasted by some meteorologists as catastrophic, lived up to its billing according to weather.com senior meteorologist Jon Erdman.
It mostly affected the South and Northeast and left around 525,273 powerless and killed at least 16 people, per CNN.com. Most of the deaths were in traffic although three men died shoveling snow.
Schools and businesses throughout the South were canceled during the storm. At least 6000 flights also got canceled.
The winter storm started in the South than moved up the East Coast.
