Winter Storm Fern made its arrival in Murray on Saturday, Jan. 24, leaving about a foot-deep blanket of snow in a town barely used to more than an inch or two. On the morning of Jan. 23, Murray State released a weather announcement, stating that classes were cancelled for the following Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, the news came too late. The University should have released its storm plan much sooner than Friday. 

For many, campus is the last place you want to be during such a massive storm, and being at home over the weekend is a better option. However, returning on Sunday would not really work, as the roads back into Murray would have little to no chance of being fully cleared by then. By cancelling classes for Monday and Tuesday, going home and then returning to campus after the storm, became a possible course of action. 

All of this happened just a day before the storm, a day when classes were still going on. With projections saying the storm would hit anywhere from that night to the next morning, there was a small window for people to leave Murray, but not nearly enough time to get their belongings together and return home.

Murray is about a six-hour drive from my house, so going home over a weekend is practically a full-day affair. Usually, I sleep in on Friday morning so I don’t get tired on the home stretch, I get the last of my stuff together and I get on the road about 11 a.m. Additionally, I need to figure out an arrangement with my professors to make up for the work I’ll have to miss to get home. 

Since we got the notice of class cancellation on Friday, I didn’t have the time to arrange for a trip home. I imagine I was not the only student in this kind of situation. 

Evidently, making the call to cancel classes on Friday squandered the potential for many students to return home, leaving them snowed in on campus in Murray. Their questions are probably the same as mine – why did it take until the last minute to receive an official cancellation?

The usual reason universities wait until the last minute for weather cancellations lies in the natural unpredictability of storms. Universities do not want to make unnecessary cancellations, so they wait until there’s no doubt surrounding the nature of the upcoming storm to make the call. 

I understand this conundrum in the case of freak storms, where the weather can change in the blink of an eye. Making a call on cancellations early on can be completely pointless, leading to said unnecessary closures. However, there are times when a weather event is practically guaranteed. Winter Storm Fern was one of these weather events. The storm had been known about for more than a week, and the chance of it not happening as predicted was practically impossible. Following the usual procedure was unnecessary. 

Murray State made the right call by cancelling classes, that is practically undebatable. Murray only has a handful of snowplows, so Monday and Tuesday were needed for cleaning up the roads and making the city safe to navigate. Unfortunately, there is little reason that call couldn’t have come sooner. More students might have been able to get off campus before the storm hit if it had. For a storm like Fern, classes were always going to be cancelled. When the outcome was always going to be the same, the decision should have been made sooner than Friday.