Thursday, February 7, 2008 - The Daily Cardinal

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PIECING TOGETHER A SOLUTION TO AUTISM UW researchers take on the complex and often controversial puzzle University of Wisconsin-Madison

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dailycardinal.com

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Blizzard shuts down Madison University cancels afternoon and night classes after daylong snowstorm covers city, campus By Whitney Newman THE DAILY CARDINAL

UW-Madison classes were canceled Wednesday afternoon due to severe weather and poor road conditions. This is only the third time in almost 20 years classes have been canceled. Provost Patrick Farrell said the university made the decision to cancel classes when city plows were pulled off the roads, buses stopped running and the snowstorm threatened to leave students stranded on campus. The city of Madison accumulated 12.5 inches of snow Wednesday. “Our job here is to provide education as best we can under virtually almost all circumstances,” Farrell said. “If it’s impossible for students, faculty or staff to get here, that’s one thing. When most of the faculty and staff came to campus this morning, that wasn’t the case.” Farrell said UW-Madison is a state agency, and cannot be closed without the governor’s order. “Technically the university itself was not closed,” he said. “Classes were canceled, but the university officially was not closed.” University Communications spokesperson John Lucas said despite student complaints, the campus will be open whenever possible, as long as it is safe and employees can travel to and from campus. “We understand that it wasn’t very popular Wednesday morn-

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CHARLIE BAKER/THE DAILY CARDINAL

Freshman Lindsay Koch (left) rides a Pop’s tray down Liz Waters hill, while UW-Madison students struggle to keep their footing. ing,” Lucas said. “We were really careful as we were staying open to specify that if people felt their safety was going to be jeopardized by coming in that we didn’t want them to travel unsafely.” Lucas said part of the hesitation to cancel classes is because students pay tuition. “There’s a little bit of a finan-

cial loss to students because you probably only are getting a certain number of class meetings for your tuition each semester, and we hate to take that away from people if we absolutely don’t have to,” he said. “People are paying a lot of money to go to class and not necsnow page 4

Visit dailycardinal.com/multimedia for a detailed look at Wednesday’s snow storm.

WEATHER BRINGS CITY TO A STANDSTILL Madison declares snow emergency The city of Madison declared a snow emergency around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday morning lasting to around 7 a.m. Friday. Record amounts of snowfall Twelve and one-half inches of snow accumulated during Wednesday’s storm. The city is currently only 3.5 inches away from a record amount of snowfall for one season. The city shuts down Dane County Sheriff’s Department recommends against using roadways after 12:30 p.m. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk closed all nonessential county offices at 1 p.m. Metro Bus service stops at 7 p.m.

AMANDA SALM/THE DAILY CARDINAL

LORENZO ZEMELLA/THE DAILY CARDINAL

Recent history of UW-Madison snow closures

CHRISTOPHER GUESS/THE DAILY CARDINAL

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006

Monday, Dec. 4, 1990

February snowstorm blankets campus, cancels night classes

First winter storm causes record snowfall

A day-long snowstorm resulted in the cancellation of all UW-Madison evening classes, as five to seven inches of snow buried the campus. UW-Madison interim provost Virginia Sapiro cancelled classes after 4:30 p.m. because of unsafe travel conditions caused by high winds and low visibility.

Responding to an unprecedented Wisconsin blizzard, University officials at 9:30 a.m. canceled all classes for the remainder of the day, leaving thousands of faculty to reschedule class sessions. A record 17.2 inches fell over the weekend.

DAMION CLAYTON/THE DAILY CARDINAL

“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”


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