Late afternoon and evening Boston University classes, and by extension many students’ midterms, were canceled yesterday at 3 p.m., after a snowstorm ripped through Eastern Massachusetts throughout the day and dropped six to eight inches of snow in Boston.
The cancellation was BU’s second of the academic year. A storm in mid-February blanketed Boston with more than two feet of snow, forcing BU to close classes for an entire day for the first time since 2000.
The snow also canceled BU’s Hockey East playoff game against Providence College in Providence, R.I. Hockey East officials said the game was canceled because of a 100-car pileup on Interstate-95, which called into serious question BU’s ability to even get to the game in time.
“It was not so much a weather problem as a logistical problem,” said Hockey East commissioner Joe Bertagna.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said administrators usually start canceling classes in the afternoon to let people coming in for evening classes know about storm conditions.
Many students said they were happy their afternoon classes were canceled because many professors had midterms scheduled.
Bryan Engels, a sophomore in the School of Management, said he had a test scheduled for 3:30 p.m. He was glad his test was postponed until after Spring Break because he did not study very much for it this week. A friend joked that he thought, “my ass is saved,” after hearing the news.
Though Kaitlyn Cuneo, a College of General Studies freshman, said her only midterm of the day was scheduled for the morning, one person on her floor had an afternoon test canceled.
“He was running around all excited,” she said. “It’s a shame it didn’t affect me and cancel my exams.”
But other students were not as lucky. CGS freshman Misty Heppler, who was busy studying for a Friday midterm last night, had a test at 3:30 p.m. which was not canceled. She said she did not hear about the campus closure until she got back to her dorm and saw an announcement on the door to her dormitory. No other students in her class had heard that classes were canceled either, she said.
“I thought ‘Damn,'” Heppler said. “It would have been nice if the test had been canceled.”
SMG sophomore Nicolle Brescia also barely missed being able to take advantage of the class cancellations. After being given the option to take a test either in the morning or afternoon, Brescia said she opted for the morning exam because she had to attend afternoon lacrosse practice.
While her test went on, her counterparts in the afternoon exam had their test postponed until after Spring Break. But Brescia said the fact that she finished the test was a mixed bag.
“I’m kind of upset that I decided to do the first one,” she said. “But I’m piled with work over break anyway, so I guess it was kind of good that I got it out of the way.”
SMG freshman Mike Vernace had the afternoon version of the test and said he was “pretty upset” it was canceled. The test will be made up either Tuesday or Thursday of the week after Spring Break, he said.
“I just wanted to get it over with,” Vernace said. “I had already studied.”
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Dicente Salazar was in class when the closure was announced and said he had a biology lab right afterward that could not have been made up. Though his professor announced that BU had closed campus, the lab went on. He said he understood the decision.
“The lab was impossible to make up, so we kind of had to have it,” he said. “I’m not upset — I didn’t know about it anyway.”
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