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Due to extreme blizzard conditions, the University of Wisconsin System closed all universities except UW-Superior.
Most of the UW System campuses — including UW-Madison, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Whitewater — were closed. Classes were canceled for the whole day, and non-essential employees were asked not to report to work.
According to a statement from UW spokesperson David Giroux, UW-Superior and UW-Milwaukee were still open Wednesday morning.
However, after consulting with the university’s weather service, Chancellor Carlos Santiago decided to cancel classes and close the UW-Milwaukee campus effective 1 p.m., according to the UW-Milwaukee website, making UW-Superior the only campus of the UW System with no closure or class cancellation.
“The campus has been open all day and classes are not canceled,” said Al Miller, spokesperson for UW-Superior. “UW-Superior is at the border of Minnesota, and we don’t have a great deal of snow here.”
He added though he did not have much chance to talk to students so far, he knew there were some who were disappointed there were no cancellations for the day.
“But it stopped snowing in the middle of the day, so overall, the snow is not really having a significant impact to the operations of the campus today,” Miller said.
UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas said having a full-day cancellation of classes is a fairly unusual occurrence.
December 1990 was the last time a large portion of a day’s classes was cancelled due to snow, Lucas said.
“The (UW-Madison) chancellor said safety was really important, and she was thinking about how not only students but also faculty could get to campus today, and so she decided to prioritize safety as the main objective and keep people from danger,” Lucas said.
He added many operations had also been canceled, and many campus services — with the exception of RecSports and the Student Activity Center — were closed.
Other campuses, including UW-La Crosse, UW-Parkside and UW-Green Bay, also canceled classes due to the blizzard. Arrangements concerning campus services and staff at different campuses might have had slight differences, but in general, the same conditions applied with non-essential staff being asked to stay at home, while essential services continued.
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Check out the nose, it’s all shiny compared to the rest.
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There was no reason for UWM to close. I live in Milwaukee, we had almost no snow on campus. Particularly curious is why they closed at 1PM, at which point the storm had passed. The roads and freeways were OK in the morning, and they were great all afternoon and evening.
Was the UWM staff just jealous that all their coworkers in the UW system got a paid day off?
It’s going to be much colder this afternoon and evening in Milwaukee than it was yesterday, are they going to cancel classes tonight because of the cold?
Be a reporter and don’t just reprint press releases please! Ask questions, like did any of the other colleges in Milwaukee close? A quick check of the local news websites would’ve shown you that only a handful of businesses closed in Milwaukee County.