The Illinois Student Senate will vote at its meeting Wednesday on a resolution petitioning the academic senate to evaluate the possibility of granting the chancellor and the provost the power to suspend obligations for class attendance in emergency situations.

This petition comes as a result of the hazardous snowstorm that occurred March 24 before classes resumed after spring break. Throughout the course of the day, the southern portion of Illinois received about a foot of snow.

There were 531 reported incidents and 44 crashes on Interstate 57 between 2 p.m. on March 24 through 2 a.m. on March 26. Four injuries were also reported during this time, one involving a University student, according to the Illinois State Police.

The Illinois State Police contacted the University between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. on the 24th to request that a notice be sent out to the student body regarding the dangerous road conditions.

At approximately 9:20 p.m. March 24, Provost Ilesanmi Adesida issued a mass email to the student body discouraging students who had not yet returned to campus from traveling until the weather improved and the roads had been cleared.

Adesida sent another mass email at 9:35 p.m. to academic professionals, civil service workers and faculty, including the instruction that they take the warning information sent to students into account when handling class attendance issues the following day.

In response to Adesida’s email, many students contacted their student senators concerned they would lose points or have other academic sanctions levied on them should they be unable to attend class March 25. The provost’s email did not guarantee students that their instructors would not penalize them for missing class.

Senator Chris Dayton, senior in LAS, said that because classes were not yet canceled, students may have already been traveling to campus, which may have put them in danger. 

“The University did not cancel classes until 1:30 in the morning,” Dayton said. “Both time instances are well out of the window in which students would have been commuting to campus.”

The resolution’s sponsors feel as though some students had to make a choice between their education and battling potentially dangerous weather conditions to return to campus because of the University’s delay in canceling classes. In addition, the senators think that because a large number of students travel back to campus at the end of spring break, the University had a responsibility to make sure students did not have to choose between their education and their safety.

The resolution makes clear that while the appropriate process to cancel classes was followed, the administration should have suspended all obligations for class attendance during the course of hazardous weather. The new resolution calls for the offices of the Chancellor and of the Provost to have the power in emergency circumstances to excuse students’ attendance in order to prevent situations where students may be endangered.

“We want to ensure that a student’s priority as well as this University’s priority is their own safety rather than attending class so they can get participation points,” Dayton said. “There is a great framework and repercussions to canceling classes that deal with union contracts, expenses, research, so canceling classes can be very costly for the University and I understand their hesitation to do so. But I believe there should be a framework (at) which point we can release students of their obligations for classwork without necessarily canceling classes.”

Liz can be reached at [email protected].