“Still too Cold”

On Wednesday, January 30, temperatures dropped to a record-breaking -50 degrees with wind chill. If you walked around campus with your head bent to the ground and a look of despair etched on your face by the wind, then you were indeed part of the historical South Bend 2019 polar vortex. But maybe you were the one person who thought that the snow looked peaceful and, actually, that the wind didn’t sting that badly. But if you were that person…well, most likely you went missing after you decided to go for a little stroll off St. Joe’s lake, imagining you were doing something crossed between Into the Wild and Narnia.

For the rest of us, well, survival is all that matters. Some have even written viewpoints expressing disapproval that the university decided to cancel classes on Wednesday, harkening back to the “glory days” of this university when students embraced the cold temps with ferocious manliness unrivaled in the state of Indiana.

The cancelation of classes on Wednesday did cause a stir. Some were so outraged that students actually protested on South Quad Wednesday afternoon, petitioning for no school on Thursday as well. A Rover reporter noted that the protestors were wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts to draw attention to their cause. When warned of the danger of frostbite, the protestors just shook their heads and ran around in circles chanting in a jumbled language that sounded vaguely like Latin. As Notre Dame is not know as a protest school, this was the first serious one to take place on campus in several years.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Notre Dame sent out a series of emails to students’ already full inboxes declaring that, out of concern for student safety, the university will remain closed for 15 minutes on Thursday. Although the email didn’t specify for which 15 minutes the school would be closed, students were ecstatic.

“I’m just so thankful the university listened to our concerns,” one student told the Rover. “We all needed those 15 minutes more than anything.”

Sarah Ortiz is a senior studying PLS and classics. She is glad to have experienced historically low temperatures, and is so thankful for those who came in to work on campus Wednesday, like the dining hall staff and campus security. To talk to her about winter survival tactics because she is so practical, reach her at sortiz2@nd.edu.