Snow wasn’t the only catastrophe

On Monday, Pitt’s lack of preparation in the event of an emergency was made painfully clear…. On Monday, Pitt’s lack of preparation in the event of an emergency was made painfully clear. Classes were canceled because of the monstrous snowstorm that dumped more than a foot of snow on the region.

Many students were unaware of the cancellation until they went to their classes and found them empty. Eventually, an alert appeared on Pitt’s Web site – a single sentence that was in no way distinguished from the other, less crucial items. Telefact, Pitt TV and this newspaper received no official notice of the closing.

Carnegie Mellon University, Chatham College, Point Park College, Community College of Allegheny County and Duquesne University all managed to notify local news media by Sunday night or early Monday morning. It’s not as if administrators needed to hold out to see if conditions improved by morning – it was clear classes needed to be canceled.

Last year, The Pitt News, as well as Pitt TV, Telefact and the Office of News and Information received a flowchart of procedures to be used in case of an emergency. It detailed a plan for notifying Pitt’s various information outlets, such as The Pitt News and Pitt TV. This plan was clearly not implemented.

Pitt is by far the largest school in the city with the most resources, and the fact that we lagged behind everyone else is a disgrace. The decision to close should have been made quickly and all local and school media should have been notified immediately.

This isn’t Florida. It’s Pittsburgh. Snow is an inevitability, and big snows are certainly not unheard of. Class cancellation is an eventuality we need a solid plan for and though it may not rank “orange” on the catastrophe scale, this was indicative of a severe organizational problem. The system in place to warn the Pitt community about snowstorms and closings is the same system used to warm us about very real and very dire problems.

Why were non-essential faculty and staff required to report? Many of them live much farther from campus than most students. Public transportation was running extremely late and not everyone drives an SUV. Forcing employees to choose between braving perilous roads and using up a vacation day is a slap in the face, showing total disrespect for the safety of faculty and staff. Only safety personnel should have been required to report.

Perhaps it’s a good thing Pitt was caught with its pants down now – maybe the administration can take steps to correct this sad state before anything worse happens.