With the third significant snowfall of the spring 2015 semester dropping 23.8 inches of snow and two more snow days on the Boston University campus, faculty and students will now have the opportunity to hold regularly scheduled classes on two Saturdays, Feb. 28 and March 21.
Approximately 73.3 inches of snow have fallen in Boston over the past 30 days, according to weather.com, forcing the university to close for five of its 18 academic days in the spring semester, as of Thursday. The snow that hit Boston on Saturday night into Tuesday morning closed BU’s Charles River and Medical Campuses on both Monday and Tuesday.
The first class day on Feb. 28 will function as a Monday daytime schedule, and the second, on March 21, will function as a Tuesday daytime schedule, according to a Tuesday email sent to the student body from the Office of the Provost. No evening classes will be held on the Saturday makeup days, but professors will have the opportunity to add time to evening classes throughout the semester.
Professors are allowed to require attendance on the Saturday makeup days, but are encouraged to work with students who have work-related or religious conflicts, the email stated.
“We understand that many faculty have already made adjustments for missed class time, and we appreciate the creativity and flexibility that has gone into those efforts,” the email stated. “However, given the total number of class days that we have missed at this point, we want to offer a way for faculty and students in all Charles River Campus schools and colleges to make up two full class days as necessary.”
BU President Robert Brown also expressed earlier in the week, in a Monday email to the student body, the need for professors and students to make up for lost class time over the first weeks of the semester.
The 30-day snow total broke the city’s previous record of 58.8 inches from the winter of 1978, a span of time that included a historic blizzard. BU spokesman Colin Riley said while he was not at BU in 1978, this semester’s five snow days are a record-high for BU, with the winter of 1978 most likely holding the last record.
Howard Sholkin, a professor in the College of Communication, is teaching his first course at BU this spring, Writing for Mass Communication, and he hasn’t met his students yet. He said he’s been doing his best to communicate with his students electronically and get them started on their first assignment.
“It’s beyond hard. There aren’t too many substitutions [to in-class learning],” he said. “It’s really a lab course. It’s really a hands-on course. Those things are hard to replicate.”
Through email, Sholkin has been communicating with his students to coordinate one or two makeup classes, outside of the university-scheduled Saturdays. The first is on Friday, though he said just under half the students in his 18-person class can attend. He also plans to hold class on the first university-scheduled Saturday.
“The students deserve my time and effort and I’m going to do whatever I can to accommodate as many of them as possible,” he said.
Juliana Lorusso, a junior in COM taking Sholkin’s course, said her professor was proactive about the situation, sending out a survey to find the best time for makeup classes and doing his best to start teaching the course material.
“What I liked was that he wasn’t freaking out about the snow days,” she said. “He was like, ‘We’ll figure it out. It’s not a big deal.’”
In fact, Lorusso said, the snow days have even given professors and students the opportunity to appreciate out-of-the-classroom tools for learning.
“I really believe that there are other ways to learn and better ways to learn than in the four walls of the classroom, so these snow days are proving that point,” she said.
Jacob Strautmann, a lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences, teaches two classes, one on Wednesday afternoons that has been canceled for snow once and one on Monday evenings that has been canceled every week. The Monday evening course about playwriting, which runs from 5 to 7 p.m., is taught through lecture, conversation and workshops, Strautmann said, and is not built to be “long-distance.”
“After the first closing, I wasn’t too worried,” he said. “Through email, I gave homework, both reading and some writing just to get our footing. The second week, I was concerned enough to create a makeup class on this past Saturday morning, which 10 of my 16 students could attend, and so we had a two-hour class on Saturday morning.”
Strautmann, who is also the managing director of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, said he was able to hold the course in his BPT office, and he hopes to schedule individual conferences with the six students who were unable to attend the Saturday class.
Though Strautmann said he will ask the class their preference for making up class time, he said he will most likely not be holding classes on the university-scheduled makeup Saturday. Another option he has considered is shifting the Monday class into three hours, rather than two, if all his students are able to attend.
“It’s fantastic that the university’s opening the possibility of makeup classes on those days,” he said. “A lot of adjunct professors have multiple positions at different universities or day jobs as well, so it’s nice that they’re giving some flexibility in terms of scheduling and using the facilities at BU to do so.”
Brett Kaplan, a first-year graduate student in the College of Engineering, said he appreciates the dilemma professors are facing with the lost class time, but the placement of the makeup days on Saturday causes a religious conflict for some students, namely Jewish students who observe Shabbat, the Jewish holy day of rest.
“Any Jew observing the Sabbath would be unable to attend the make-up classes, whether he/she is a student or professor,” he said in an email. “I’m not upset about these make-ups being on Shabbos necessarily, given the excused absence policy, which I will leverage to the fullest extent.”
Kaplan said professors should be considering other alternatives to class makeup times, including holding class on a Sunday instead or scheduling evening classes.
“Just be fair and sensitive to consider the needs of all demographics of the student and faculty bodies when determining how to make up these missed classes,” he said.
Several students said professors are doing the best they can to make up the snow days and help students stay on track with assignments.
Mary Henriquez, a first-year graduate student studying arts administration in the Metropolitan College, said she has a Tuesday evening class that has been canceled twice, and her professor has not yet discussed plans for making up the lost instructional time.
“It’s a difficult situation,” she said. “Maybe putting the slides online would help, maybe doing some kind of a recorded lecture, offering to try to find a different evening within the week that could accommodate most students, but it’s tricky because everyone has different schedules. The professors are really put between a rock and a hard place.”
Victoria Olakojo, a sophomore in the School of Management, said many of her professors have made accommodations to make up class time during the week, so she hopes they’ll choose not to hold class on the makeup Saturdays.
“A lot of students have work, have clubs that meet. I know both of my roommates have tournaments that exact weekend,” she said. “It’s good that they’re making up the class work, but being a student is about more than going to class. We have things that we have to do that are part of the whole college experience.”
Despite conflicts in making up instructional time, Sholkin, like many other professors and students, said he is just looking forward to getting into a normal routine with his class.
“I’m looking forward to actually seeing students. I’ve been to my classroom and tested out the equipment,” he said. “My engine has been running in idle … and I’m ready to go into first gear.”
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