UW-Madison classes were canceled Wednesday afternoon due to severe weather and poor road conditions. This is only the third time in almost 20 years classes have been canceled.
Provost Patrick Farrell said the university made the decision to cancel classes when city plows were pulled off the roads, buses stopped running and the snowstorm threatened to leave students stranded on campus. The city of Madison accumulated 12.5 inches of snow Wednesday.
Our job here is to provide education as best we can under virtually almost all circumstances,"" Farrell said. ""If it's impossible for students, faculty or staff to get here, that's one thing. When most of the faculty and staff came to campus this morning, that wasn't the case.""
Farrell said UW-Madison is a state agency, and cannot be closed without the governor's order.
""Technically the university itself was not closed,"" he said. ""Classes were cancelled, but the university officially was not closed.""
University Communications spokesperson John Lucas said despite student complaints, the campus will be open whenever possible, as long as it is safe and employees can travel to and from campus.
""We understand that it wasn't very popular Wednesday morning,"" Lucas said. ""We were really careful as we were staying open to specify that if people felt their safety was going to be jeopardized by coming in that we didn't want them to travel unsafely.""
Lucas said part of the hesitation to cancel classes is because students pay tuition.
""There's a little bit of a financial loss to students because you probably only are getting a certain number of class meetings for your tuition each semester, and we hate to take that away from people if we absolutely don't have to,"" he said.
""People are paying a lot of money to go to class and not necessarily to take snow days off.""
The cancellation of UW-Madison classes came late in comparison to surrounding colleges and public schools.
UW-Milwaukee, Edgewood College and Madison Area Technical College closed for the day, and Madison Public Schools shut down for the second time in two weeks and only the third time in 14 years.
Dane County employees were sent home early Wednesday afternoon and all Madison School District activities were canceled for the evening.
All Madison Metro buses, including those serving campus routes, discontinued service at 7 p.m. All campus libraries, except for Helen C. White Library, closed by 6 p.m.
Both Memorial Union and Union South also closed early.
Marc Kennedy, Union communications director, said he could not remember the last time the Unions have closed early.
""It's been a long time, as far as I can remember, but with the buses not running after seven, we didn't want to encourage people to come down here,"" Kennedy said.
