SVSU needs a plan for severe winters

February 11, 2008 —

BURIED -

You'll rarely hear anyone complain about a snow day. Not students, not faculty, not even us. The people who plow the roads and parking lots? Yeah, they probably aren't big fans of snow days. For everyone else, it's basically a pass go, collect $200 type of situation.

But is there a threshold upon which we can no longer afford to cancel school for weather-related reasons? More importantly, if we cancel school for, let's say, two weeks, how do we make it up? Do we? The University's General Operations manual details situations under which school may be canceled, but we can't find any details as to what University officials are expected to do should a sigifnicant portion of school get canceled.

It's easy to forget that school costs money, but our fellow students - and taxpayers - do in fact pay for us to learn. In fact, we pay a lot. SVSU's General Fund for fiscal year 2008 is well over $100 million.

Tuition for Fall 2007/Winter 2008 is $194.40 per credit hour for resident undergraduates, who make up the vast majority of SVSU students. This averages out to $2,332 per semester, or about $40 per three-hour class per week.

Not an unacceptable loss by any means, but that instruction time is not reimbursed. As much as everyone loves the extra time off, we're only cheating ourselves by not making up the lost time in the classroom.

Whether or not students particularly mind cheating themselves is certainly up for debate. Would people willingly shell out $40 to skip their three-hour class without worrying about their grade being affected? Maybe some would.

But that issue is really of secondary concern. The problem we're facing is simple: we don't know what plan, if any, the school has for multiple cancellations. If class was canceled on five Wednesdays throughout the semester, students with three-hour classes on Wednesday are receiving 66 percent of the instruction that they paid for. And while you probably wouldn't hear too many of them complain, that's no reason not to act.

There's no easy solution to the problem, from what we can tell. It makes some abstract sense to refund the money to students, but that's a little unfair to the University and its non-salaried employees especially, who didn't ask for it to snow. The workers still need a full paycheck, since the bills aren't going anywhere no matter how much it snows.

It makes a little more sense to set aside a week at the end of the semester during which classes can be made up. For example, if you missed three classes during the school year, you could make them up all in one week. The problem with that is that it would require a scheduling and coordinating effort on par with that of the Normandy landing, and of course it would postpone exams a week.

These are merely talking points. We hope someone has put some thought into the problem. There are some legitmate concerns with regards to this issue - let's not bury it.