tl19830217-000 "ht A- The Towel:light Vo1. 76 No. 18 Baseball is 90 percent mental and only 50 percent physical. �Yogi Berm PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 February 17, 1983 Snow.� old man winter dumped 22 inches and shut the door on TSU raking a powder Some snow-crazed students prove that it is possible to have a good time at TSU without ending up in the ""Police Blot-ter."" (Unless, of course your car is buried or stuck, which is not such a good time, dammit.) Towerlight photos by Bob Tarleton But at least nobody starved and the campus roads were fairly clear By Mark T. Baltimore Mike Judge and Marty Kerr The blizzard of 1983 forced Towson State students to miss classes due to snow fall, Friday, February 11, and Monday February 14, for the first time since the blizzard of 1979, when a whole week of classes was cancelled, The decision to cancel classes is made by Donald N. McCulloh, vice president of the University. ""I cancelled classes on Friday based on the prediction for more snow,"" Mc- Culloh said. The decision to cancel classes on Monday was based on the poor condi-tions of parking lots on campus and the poor road conditions around the state, McCulloh said. ""The problem now is that there is so damn much snow that we don't have any place to put it all,"" he said. Although McCulloh has the author-ity to cancel classes he does not have the same authority to tell the state employees working on campus to stay home. ""The problem now is that there is so damn much snow that we don't have any place to put it all."" �Vice-President McCulloh The decision to allow state employees to stay home come from the State Secretary of Personnel. State employees were told to stay home Friday; however, they reported to work Monday as usual. During lighter snowfall conditions McCulloh said that he wakes up the morning after a snow storm at 5:00 a.m. ""I call my plant director to ascertain what the conditions of the parking lots are and what the condi-tions of the sidewalks are."" ""I also call the police department to find out what road conditons are like. I get all this information and by 5:30 a.m. I make my decision,"" McCulloh said. However, due to the severe condi-tions of last weeks snow fall the deci-sion to cancel classes was made much more quickly, he said. McCulloh said that the University would not suffer financially from the snow storm because funds for condi-tions such as this are included in the state budget. He said that there were problems with equipment breakdowns and over-time to state employees. However, the University has saved money over the weekend because several buildings were not heated because events were cancelled, McCulloh said. Patricia Plante, vice president of academic affairs said that the Univer-sity's academic calendar would not suffer from the class cancellations. ""This is so infrequent that we have to cancel [classes] that it is all part of the semester,"" Plante said. She did say however, ""If we had a week of no classes I would go to the University Senate and discuss the pro-blem. But as far as I can see two classes won't change the academic calendar in any way,"" Plante said. Ancient philosophers, partiers and a lot of snow hit TSU By John O'Loughlin Por years, the ancient philosophers attempted to ,u,nclerstand the world. They came up with all sorts of `neories that explained happenings which were a IllYstery to the common being. Many of these honorable thinkers believed the tm.'liverse was perfect, and that all phenomena were repe-itious or at least set in patterns, and were somehow Itiethematically predictable. b However right or wrong these assumptions may hay i eeo, they made sense to many, and still today, man. teisser intellectuals sometimes explain occurrences usini Ythagoras and his theories as a logical base. It can h 2toforting yet unsettling to believe similar events ar Ote than coil cidental. Ii But humans are strange in that respect. We like t ve as many things as possible planned out, and enjo: 11'2 stability and calmness of scheduling everything i 44vance. After all, we elect a president every four year d send athletes to the Olympics quadrennially (wel -`41ost). y And, to make a contribution to the argument, four ago this week, it snowed. And not just any snow tell them about it Don Pardo .. . it snowed plenty. ,,e got 22 inches in 1979 and this time we were blessed th 22.8 inches. LAnd just as four years ago, we didn't have to go to e,?,001 for a few days. ',he celebrations started sometime after the Thursday rit �arties subsided when in a half-sober state some optimistic owls decided there would be no school Friday morning. It's funny how prophetic one can be at 1:30 a.m. after a few beers. Just as the Towson State residents of four years past, students immediately took to the hills outside the dormi-tories, clad in parkas, boots, hats and gloves, and armed with anything that would serve as a vehicle for snow-surface transportation. That means anything from a ""The celebrations started sometime after the Thursday night parties subsided, when in a half-sober state, some optimistic owls decided there would be no school Friday morning. It's funny how prophetic one can be at 1:30 a.m. after a few beers."" Flexible Flyer to an inner tube, from a mattress to a Newell Hall serving tray. Just as overwhelming as 48 months ago were the sales at R&M Liquors and Pizza Palace, where any TSU stu-dent would walk .48 miles through a blinding snowstorm for a cold Stroh's beer. And although the library was closed, there were those who used the extra time off to catch up on some reading and get that long-neglected studying done. Right? But, this time there is a Towerlight. So what, you say? Well, it seems there was no Towerlight on February 23, 1979. Why, you ask? Snow. Nobody had a chance to pick up a February 16 issue that year because there was no school that Friday. (The Towerlight was published on Fridays until this year.) Then, not enough Towerlight staff could make it to the office the next week to put out an issue. So the editors decided to take a week off and save their news until March 2. In 1979, the University Senate (then the Academic Council) voted to add two days to the school calendar in order to make up for the days we missed because of snow. Keeping in mind that the semester was only 14 weeks back then (it's 15 now), the Senate was obviously determined to make sure students got their money's John Simpson has mixed reactions to the latest Grub worth. That sat ie year, the State Board for Higher Street Wit page 4 Education voteq to increase the length of a semester by a week. And finally, four years ago some brothers of Phi Kappa fraternity thought they could outsmart Vice- President Wayne Schelle, the man who at the time was Cal Haines reviews ""Come Back to the 5 and Dime. Jimi responsible for deciding whether to close school. Appar- Dean, Jimi Dean"" page 5 ently the Greeks, in an effort to gain an additional day off, traveled to Schelle's house and covered his car with snow, hoping he would look out the window and after seeing his car, cancel classes. But there is more to the decision-making process than that, and Towson State opened for business the next day. As it turned out, the frat brothers had covered Mrs. Schelle's car and the vice-president drove to school without a problem. -o- The University Physical Plant kept campus roads in good shape following this Friday's blizzard. ""The roads here were in much bet-ter shape than other area roads,"" said Raymond Long, transportation manager at Physical Plant. University personnel began work-ing on the roads at 2:30 Friday morn-ing, and throughout the day most of the roads were passable. At 5:00 Fri-day afternoon, there was one lane open with minimal snow cover on the road from the Burke Avenue entrance to Linthicum Hall. Fifteen cars were stuck on campus roads during the storm, and clean-up crews towed them to Lot 9 free of charge. Up to twenty-five University employees aided snow removal ef-forts on campus, while an outside con-tractor cleared the major parking lots. At the peak, ten pieces of equip-ment were clearing the snow, and there were very few breakdowns. ""We were very lucky,"" said Long. As of 11:00 Monday morning, all the center campus and Administration lots had been cleared. University per-sonnel were working on the Towson Center lots, and expected to have them clear by late Monday afternoon. Katie Ryan of University Relations said she expected parking to be tight on Tuesday and planned to call area radio stations to ask students to car pool Tuesday to reduce the demand for space. The Physical Plant planned to give CA's shovels to help resident students dig their cars out of the snow. -o- Well, one thing can be said about this past weekend, resident stu-dents didn't starve. The Newell Dining Hall held up against the blizzard of '83. ""We really didn't have any problems this weekend, only one change in menu because one of our orders didn't come in,"" said Bud Cadwallader, the manager of Newell Hall. Because of the snowstorm, most resident students who normally would go home on the weekend were stranded on campus. This increase of students on the weekend put a strain on the dining hall but Cad-wallader said that ""the student workers really pitched in to help. ""There wasn't any shortage of food. If the main course was to run out we had 400 pounds of stocked-up hamburger,"" said Cadwallader. There was a noticed increase in the amount of stolen equipment from Newell, especially plates and trays which are used for sledding when it snows. ""Since we put a watch-person near the exit we've reduced the amount of stealing considerably. All the stealing does is increase the cost of board for the student,"" said Cadwallader. ""We figure about $25,000 a year for replacement,"" he continued. in this issue The continLing saga of Eric Mills's ""MURDER U.S.A. page 3 0 Results of last week's Greater Baltimore Track Meet held at the Towson Center page 6 "
