It doesn’t take much to recognize how miserable February at Ithaca College can be. We try to make the best of it, but the fact is, it’s constantly freezing out and it snows about five to seven days a week. Most of us carry a sickly, pasty complexion into the nominally warmer spring months, unless you frequent TanFastic (and if you do, your friends are right to make fun of you).
This is all not to mention the fact that the semester is in full swing throughout February, with no scheduled days off and no end in sight to the course work. To stay sane, students need to be allowed to blow off some steam and entertain themselves. That’s why we here at Buzzsaw find it ridiculous that Public Safety broke up the all-campus snowball fight that was organized during the afternoon of Wednesday, Feb. 2. Instead of being happy that students had decided to leave their computers and various other glowing screens behind for a couple hours to actually have a memorable experience, the college looked at the event as a liability, I guess thinking some malicious asshole would pack ice and rocks in his snowballs and really hurt someone.
However, the event had been all in good fun, and Public Safety broke it up anyway, even reportedly knocking down the snow penises that students had worked hard on erecting after everyone had decided to leave. That pretty much sounds like the Anti-Snow Fun Gestapo to me.
But the bizarre thing is that it’s not about safety. If it were, we’d have the day off during and right after large snowfalls. Instead, we receive Intercom e-mails every time a considerable snowstorm comes along, reminding us that Ithaca College will never close under any circumstance, ever. To get to class on Friday, Feb. 25 in about a half foot of snow, I personally needed help from a random resident on my street to push me out of my parking space before I swerved my way up the hill to campus. With the college administration’s determined, defiant attitude toward the weather, I thought the roads might be in better shape on campus, but this was not to be. It was pretty much as bad as the rest of Ithaca, maybe worse, and the vast majority of open parking spaces were covered with embankments of snow that drivers struggled to get over.
Any idiot could tell you it’s more dangerous to drive in half a foot of snow than it is to participate in a snowball fight. What we can take from these things is simple: Ithaca College hates your snow fun. But as a proposed compromise for the future, we only ask that the administration be more consistent: baby us with snow days and broken up snowball fights or continue your Cal Ripken-esque streak of campus openage while letting intense snow battles rage on for as long as students wish. But for now, it just looks like the administration is trying to make a tough winter even more unpleasant.
-Chris Giblin