The cold weather sweeping across the Midwest this past week blessed Bradley students with a day and a half of canceled classes.
According to the National Weather Service, the temperature on Wednesday got as low as minus 20 degrees with a wind chill of 44 below zero in Peoria.
Bradley announced Monday afternoon that the university would close Tuesday night after classes and planned on reopening Thursday morning. As of Tuesday night, administration was still planning on having a normal schedule on Thursday, but on Wednesday night, classes were delayed until noon.
On Wednesday, all university offices were closed except residential dining. In the email announcing the cancellations, administration urged students not to go outside unless they absolutely had to.
According to University spokesperson Renee Charles, the decision to shut down the university was mostly due to the wind chill.
“We decided we would close because of not just the temperature, but more so because of the wind with it,” Charles said. “When you add the wind chill with it, it makes it even more dangerous.”
According to Charles, the difference between shutting down the university on Tuesday night instead of on Wednesday was that employees that work over night did not have to come in.
“We have facilities people that are here over night and people that come in at four o’clock in the morning,” Charles said.
Charles said they closed at 10 p.m. Tuesday because no classes would be affected Tuesday.
“We looked at when the last class was,” Charles said. “We cut it off when the last class ended, so those classes aren’t impacted multiple days.”
The cold weather brought a slippery commute for students trying to get around the past week. Junior accounting major Colin Weber attested to this.
“I walked outside, slipped, fell and then had my stats teacher laughed at me,” Weber said.
Junior nursing major Sarah Markey added that her friends had a difficult time getting around campus.
“The sidewalks by the Alumni Quad get so slippery that all of my roommates have fallen and actually injured themselves on it,” Markey said.
The facilities crew was out putting salt down and plowing sidewalks, but some students thought it wasn’t done well enough.
“They really only salt near the doorway and don’t salt much elsewhere,” said Daniel Shaw, a sophomore computer science major. “If they do salt elsewhere, it isn’t really enough, so it is really slick.”
Since most students stayed indoors, there was not much activity on campus Wednesday. However, the construction workers were still working on the Business and Engineering Complex throughout the day.
“A lot of the stuff they are doing is enclosed,” Charles said. “It’s 68 degrees in there right now. Some of them are there in their t-shirts.”
