In a semester that started on a cold day where the temperature on campus hit as low as minus 11, some students may be left wondering about Kirkwood Community College’s class cancellation policy.
“We know that most of our students that come to our campuses are either coming from the local apartments, they’re driving, they’re walking, they’re riding the bus for transportation,” said Vice President of Facilities Troy McQuillen. “A lot of it has to do with safety. Most of all, we will watch over to see what the DOT says on their roadway reports to know like if you know what are the conditions of the roadways to be able to get folks to campus.
“Secondly, we’ll look to see what our campuses conditions are. We do all of our own in-house snow removal and ice meld. We want to make sure that students, once they get parked, can safely access our buildings.”
According to McQuillen the decision to cancel classes is done by a committee including himself, President Kristie Fisher, and Vice President of Academic Affairs Jennifer Bradley. The decision is always consensus but they still debate to ensure they see all sides.
This committee looks at the forecast to see what weather is happening later and when, according to McQuillen. They also consider what events are taking place on campus including academic, athletic and other happenings.
In regard to the first day of the spring semester, he said, “We wanted to make sure that students got as good a start as they could. Our public safety was diligent to make sure that anyone who was standing outside, or waiting for the bus stop, or needed a car jump start, or had a flat tire was OK.
We feel comfortable that folks will get to campus. Students are really good about communicating with their faculty when they have issues with starting cars or need to babysit. So, we trust that students communicate when they can’t make it with their faculty during that time as well. But our goal is to be open whenever we can.”
Students have varying opinion about the college’s policy. Annabelle Bottorff, liberal arts, said, “I thought it was kind of bogus. We have many foreign exchange students that don’t have cars and have to walk and minus 11 degrees I think is just at the point we should cancel class and or move it to all online Zoom classes.”
She added, “I do think that they should move class online [during cold weather], especially with people who walk to class or don’t have cars.”
Addelyn Sullivan, nursing, said she agrees with the college’s policy and it makes sense to prioritize getting students to class.
McQuillen offered the polar vortex in 2019, when the wind chill reached as low as minus 51, as an example of when Kirkwood canceled classes for temperature-related reasons. The vortex led to a college record of cancellations with six days that year.
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