Student, employee safety neglected

In my experience as a graduate student at Duke, the administration has usually been reluctant to cancel classes in the face of threatened weather. While this reluctance is often justified (forecast snow rarely materializes), administration officials acted irresponsibly in the face of Hurricane Isabel's danger.

As The Chronicle reported, the Provost decided at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 18 to cancel classes that started after 3 p.m. This was too late and out of step with surrounding businesses and schools. The University of North Carolina system campuses decided earlier in the day to close at 2 p.m., local school systems did not open or they closed early and a number of businesses shut their doors early.

In addition, the announcements implementing the severe weather policy and canceling classes were poorly disseminated. A number of graduate students I spoke with that evening and Friday were not even aware that Duke had canceled classes---they instead chose to guard their own safety by going home early.

Neither did the administration seem to take into account the faculty or staff's difficulties in traveling later that day. In fact, they managed to force many workers to go home during the most intense part of the storm. Even students who lived on campus were at obvious risk: West and East campuses were both littered with fallen limbs and flying, stinging debris and any of this could have easily hurt campus pedestrians.