Here at Oswego State, we pride ourselves on our toughness in the face of harsh weather. We have all likely faced the same response from friends and relatives when discussing our college choice: “Oh, Oswego—you must really love the snow, huh?” The truth is, the majority of us do. Maybe it’s not love in the traditional fashion, but at the very least it’s an acceptance and appreciation of the identity it gives us as a school.
This is exactly why last Friday’s class cancellation was so surprising. Our brothers-in-snow over at The College at Brockport and Syracuse University managed to stay open, even when the conditions in Brockport seemed to be much more intense. All this begs the question: has Oswego gone soft?
We, of course, would never want to complain about an unexpected day off; so by all means administration, go ahead and cancel class whenever you feel compelled. But we should also have some concern for whether or not a random cancellation such as Friday’s is damaging our reputation as the Snowtroopers of the SUNY system. It is better to be the people who get to complain on Facebook about not having class cancelled than it is to be the people who everyone rolls their eyes at and says, “How did their class get cancelled?”
We should fear no storm. We are Oswego. We are the people who trudge out to the bars in sub-zero temperatures because it’s Mug Night, damn it! We are the people who aren’t afraid to walk in high heels on ice. We are the people who walk to class hunched over to avoid being blown away into the lake by the wind. We are the people who cast no judgment upon each other for walking around campus in Eskimo attire. We even have people hardened enough to the cold walk around in shorts mid-winter; though we do kind of judge them.
So we at The Oswegonian are somewhat disappointed in the premature cancellation. It feels a little bit like a loss of identity for us. We came to this school expecting to journey into the most trying of conditions, not to hide from a storm named after a one-finned fish that floundered before it reached us. We have a reputation to uphold as the John McClane’s of Upstate New York. So ask yourself: would Dean McClane have cancelled class last Friday?
