Winter Weather Protocols

The Franklin and Dean College area received more than 10 inches of snow with the last storm that came through. Lots of things have to go on behind the scenes for the campus to continue working while there is an extreme weather warning on the horizon. 

The Dean of Students, Dave Drucker, has an important role in this process. He is a part of the D.I.R.T. team which stands for the Dean Incident Response Team. It is made up of himself, Chief Corkran, and members from human resources, facilities, academic affairs, and residence life. They come together to determine whether a winter storm is bad enough to have to start planning on cancelling school. 

“We think about whether students will have to move cars, how it might impact classes, how it might impact commuter students and faculty, and just the overall cleanup of campus.” He mentioned. 

Another important factor for residents is making sure the dining hall stays open and functioning during a storm. They will often change the hours to brunch hours (opening at 10 am) because most students will not be eating breakfast as early as they usually do.  

The D.I.R.T team will hold meetings before and during impact storms, so they are able to track the weather as the storm approaches.  

As for students moving cars, that depends on the duration of the storm because cars can’t be moved until the storm is over. Drucker said, “We have a company, Brightview, that does a lot of the shoveling. They get all the paths cleaned in between the cars and then we can ask students to shovel and begin to move around campus.”  

Cars buried in Jones Lot after the most recent storm. Photo Courtesy: Shea Cassani

With the most recent storm in particular, Dean Drucker said that a lot of the faculty members who have been here for a while have experienced a storm of this caliber, but none of the residents have.  

Drucker said, “We made the decision for this storm a little bit earlier because we knew it was happening on a weekend.” That allowed some students to go home for the storm if they wanted. This was something that was taken into consideration when deciding to cancel Monday’s classes.  

One of the bigger challenges with this snowfall was that there was not a lot of melting going on in the last week because of the frigid temperatures. Without melting, sidewalks have stayed covered, and all other snowy areas have stayed covered. 

For the team at Dean, they have seen a lot of storms over the years, so they are prepared for all that’s to come. They have checklists that have proven to work well in the past. They make sure all the students are fed, warm, and safe, those are the top priorities. 

Drucker made sure to also credit the facilities team, campus safety, and Brightview for their cleanup efforts around campus. Sodexo, Dean’s food service provider, was also mentioned as a part of the efforts to get the campus back to its regularly scheduled activities. 

As for future storms, Punxsutawney Phil predicted that there will be six more weeks of winter, so we are in for more cold weather and possibly snow. 

True to New England weather, there is more snow on the horizon for the weekend ahead. Keep an eye on your email for any updates from Dean Drucker and Chief Corkran about the snow, dining hall hours, and any movement of cars.