On Sunday, January 25th, Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Jennifer Jarvis sent an email to students, faculty and staff announcing that Queens College was going remote for the first day of the Spring Semester in response to the massive snowstorm that hit New York City. When they returned to campus, students and faculty alike faced weather-related difficulties.
“The instance happened at around 9:45, I was going to the Student Union and came up the lower level stairs. I ended up slipping and falling on the ice improperly cleaned outside of the SU. I sustained an eyebrow injury, my eye got black and blue. It was a 2-foot patch [of ice,]” said Amaya Hossein, a Sophomore Corporate Finance major at QC, in a statement to The Knight News.
While the Quad’s walkways were clear enough to pass through, areas around the Student Union and Dining Hall were surrounded by ice and snow. Professor Veronica Schanoes mentions that “Leaving Klapper on the 4th floor side, the steps had been shoveled, but all the snow had been piled up on either side of the railings, so there was no way to hold on to the rails as you stepped down icy stairs.”
On the other end of the campus, maintenance staff at The Summit were hard at work. One staff member shared their experience with cleaning up the snow and ice in front on January 26th.
“The problem was that when [the staff] shoveled, more snow would fall down. We did our best to make sure that paths were clear for people. B&G [Building & Grounds] did not help us, they just gave us a bag of ice to put down.”
The after-effects of the storm left commuters more barriers in getting to campus. Dr. Caroline Kyungah Hong, Associate Professor of English and Asian American Community Studies (AACS), shared her difficult experience with commuting, stating that: “There was just so much traffic. It took me almost 4 times as long as usual to commute to campus. And even though I left very early, I was still a couple minutes late to my morning class.”
Travel delays meant that commuters were coming in late to attend or teach classes. “Students and faculty would have benefited immensely from more remote days last week,” one third-year English Major said.
Furthermore, the snow made traversing campus difficult. A majority of the pathways were covered in ice and snow for the entirety of that week. One dormer, a Junior Year Education
Major, mentioned the snow blockage on the Summit pathways: “The sidewalks were blocked, only like one person could get through them.”
There is conversation surrounding the effects of the storm on campus on the QC Subreddit, a place of support for all students. u/Level_Scar_3668, a Political Science Major and Senior, mentioned that “It was cold and I could barely feel my feet. The buses are too slow and it is hard to walk through the snow on campus and around campus because they didn’t completely clear more walkable paths. It should have stayed online, at least for this whole week.”
According to Denese Gordon, Interim Assistant Vice-President for Facilities Planning & Operations, “The safety of the campus community is our highest priority. Our Buildings and Grounds crew worked multiple days on snow removal. Thanks to their efforts, major pathways were cleared and access to all buildings on our 80-acre campus was restored following a 12-to 14-inch snowfall.”
There’s no telling whether another storm of this scale will hit again this winter. If it does, it will be an opportunity to gauge whether the college’s safety goals will be met in ways that make the QC community feel safe on campus.