Last week was supposed to be a quiet week for the Carleton Residential Life Office. Students arriving on campus often leads to Res Life getting busier: students moving in need access to storage areas, many returning have lost their keys, door decorations need to be printed and posted, and RAs need to be reminded of how to irritate their residents. Winter Term, however, is different: usually, January brings large quantities of snow, which prevents many of the common Res Life issues. This year, however, there is no snow. As a result, students have had many more problems affecting housing and other facets of campus life.
“This year, I had to let in three residents,” said one RA. “Res Life told me I wouldn’t have to let in any because I could tell them my car got stuck in the snow, but there was no snow for my pretend car to get stuck in. I had to walk all the way across the hall twice. I didn’t really mind, but I just felt very misled by what that [area director] told me to expect.”
PEAR sports has been struggling too, needing to find alternate activities for sports reliant on snow. Skating classes have been able to relocate to the Weitz dance studio, where they’ve discovered the floor is almost as slippery as the ice rink. Diving classes, which are typically combined with the ENTS department’s ice fishing classes, have been canceled. Without ice to drill through before practicing their dives, students found themselves too bored at the prospect of swimming to continue.
Another affected PE class is Nordic skiing. “Nordic is one of my favorite classes to teach,” said one PE teacher, “all you have to do is give someone a pair of skis, send them into the Arb and hope they come back. It’s usually a student, but you don’t always know. I’ve lost a few civilians in there. My record’s better than a lot of my colleagues, though—in Jim’s classes, 30% of the skiers are regular old Northfield residents, and his return rate has never been above 50%. The insurance company makes us keep track.”
This winter, as a replacement activity, PEAR sports collaborated with Cross Country Ski Team captains and Nordic Ski instructors to turn the Chapel Basement into a maze. At the start of PE class, students are instructed to go down the stairs. At the end of the gym class, any student who manages to find their way out gets credit for attending.
Professors, too, have found that the lack of snow on campus has made their jobs more challenging.
“Look, I didn’t expect anyone to show up to class,” said one political science professor. “Usually I wake up to emails from most of my students saying that they’ve been snowed in and won’t be able to come to class. I assume it’s not true because, as we all know, facilities does an exemplary job of clearing the snow from walkways efficiently—but it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I get to stay home with my cat on those days. I call that Stevie’s Snow Day. But now all of that’s down the drain.”
Students interested in taking actions against the lack of snow on the ground have been encouraged to attend the rally on the Mini Bald Spot next Thursday during common time to shake off all of the dandruff from their heads into a pile on the ground.
