Students drove on snowy roads and dealt with car damage as snow continued to fall this morning.

Snow began falling on Wednesday night, and continued to this morning. The university remained open as they continued plowing snow off of the roads.

Celeste Nobles, a senior psychology major, said the roads were not clear on her drive to campus.

Nobles lives in Mt. Vernon, she said it is a 15-minute drive. The main roads and highways weren’t clear, according to Nobles. 

Nobles also said the ramp leading up to the university wasn’t clear of snow when she arrived around 8:30 a.m. She said it looked like the roads were just beginning to be plowed at the university. 

“When I came in the parking lots were covered in snow,” She said. “How do people in early classes get in if I could barely get in without them plowing a spot?”

Nobles said she didn’t have much of a choice to come to campus because she had an exam.

“I had to be here, and they weren’t going to reschedule it,” Nobles said. “I feel like people are penalized if they don’t go to class.” 

Nobles said she doesn’t agree with the university’s decision to continue classes today.

“I definitely think they should’ve closed today,” Nobles said. “Yesterday when we came in I didn’t think it was a problem because the roads were cleared by the time we got here. But the roads today were horrible when I came in.”

Nobles said a friend almost slid on her way to campus.

Provost Mohammed Khayum said the process the university takes to deal with bad weather is to do a couple of checks on the roads around, and leading to, the campus around 3 a.m. 

Khayum said the university does not have a policy for classes to be virtual when the campus is closed due to weather.

“Since we haven’t really had a policy such as that, we didn’t want to do anything like that midstream,” he said.

According to Khayum, the university will continue with this decision-making for this academic year.

“Last night I was driving in the snow, and I thought we were going to have everything canceled for today,” said Cora Elmes, a sophomore nursing major. “I was surprised that we didn’t.”

Elmes was in her apartment getting ready for class this morning when a sheriff knocked on her door to notify her that someone had run into her car.

A university truck with a snowplow hit Elmes’ car this morning in the parking lot of the Morton building.

Elmes said the university worked with Zoom for the first weeks of class, she said it would have been okay if classes were held through Zoom today.

Renija King, a junior exercise science major, said when she woke up this morning, she didn’t know it would still be snowing. 

When King went outside around 7:20 a.m. to clean off her car. She said she was skeptical she could make it out of her parking space.

King said she drove slowly on her way to class, she said the roads were still bad.

“I definitely think if they didn’t cancel class, they probably should’ve been out earlier to shovel the snow,” King said.