Western Michigan University is notorious for the fact that—regardless of weather—they never shut down. As this news article points out, the university has only closed for an entire day twice in the last seven years. I don’t know how the university administration feels about this (proud, no doubt), but it’s not really something right home about, especially on days like today.
I drove home last night for a scheduled teeth cleaning this morning and had the pleasure of driving through the horrible snow storm assaulting the midwest. I couldn’t see much in front of me besides the tail lights of other vehicles (what few were out), and the road disappeared under snow and ice about half way back. I also learned that spinning out while doing 40mph on a highway and nearly sliding into the car next to you is the most fun you can have while driving in a horrible snow storm, if you live through it. By the time I got off of I-94 I had to pull over and knock the ice off of my windshield wipers and scrape some off of my windshield.
Things didn’t improve much today. It wasn’t as dark, but I didn’t do more than 35mph on my way back to campus. The roads were still completely covered, and the wind was gusting to almost 40mph. Everything around WMU, including other colleges, universities, ice rinks, and businesses, was shut down today due to severe weather. In fact, most of the state was shut down, and for good reason: the weather is really nasty.
Not Western, though. They obviously don’t care about things like safety or sanity, because everything related to WMU was open today. Everything. An ice rink in downtown Kalamazoo closed because of the weather, but Western stayed open. KVCC, a community college barely 20min from WMU’s campus, was shut down, but not Western. They must realize that students usually get to class either by driving (which I wouldn’t suggest anyone do today) or walking (which is just so much fun with a windshield factor of -13).