Campus Safety Works Hard Amid a Snowy Winter

After the snow storm, students had to dig out their cars from two feet of snow. Photo courtesy of Samantha Stulbaum '26

This year’s “spring” semester has got off to a deceptive start, with a record-breaking snow storm, sub-zero degree weather and Punxsutawney Phil predicting six more weeks of winter. Needless to say, it has felt like the furthest thing from spring. 

With these winter conditions comes the need for extra safety measures to ensure all students, faculty and staff can get to and from campus carefully. 

Every year, Campus Safety and Security works hard to combat winter weather issues. On Jan. 25, their Severe Weather Incident Management Program was put to the test when over 15 inches of snow landed in Poughkeepsie. 

Daniel Gough, director of Campus Safety, said efforts to clear the snow from campus were a week-long process. 

In anticipation of the large snowfall, Campus Safety and the Physical Plant department worked together to hire a third-party plowing company to assist the groundskeepers with snow removal. They also made a plan of which parking lots needed to be cleared first so the campus could open as quickly as possible. The parking lots that were prioritized were faculty, staff and commuter lots. 

“It was going to take a significant amount of time to do the snow removal,” Gough said. “Prioritizing those lots was important because if we could clear those lots before Tuesday morning, we would be able to have in-person classes.” 

Gough emphasized that if student lots were prioritized first, the campus would not have been able to open the next day. 

In order to get the snow cleared, snowplow operators worked around the clock from the morning of Jan. 25 to late in the day on Jan. 26. Gough said the only time plows weren’t running during the storm was from midnight to 3 a.m. 

“Kudos to Facilities,” Gough said, “That really was a Herculean task.”

For the rest of the week, plows were going around campus helping to clear out other lots. Since there was no place to put the snow, garbage trucks were to be used to help dump the snow off-site. Four different garbage trucks brought the snow to 57 Fulton St. 

Gough classified the snow as an “advanced notice storm,” which allowed time for him and the Severe Weather Incident Management team to meet days in advance of the anticipated storm and plan the procedures.  

The team is made up of 18 members across 12 different departments, with key members including Provost Catherine Kodat, Vice President of Operations Geoffrey Brackett, Vice President of Student Affairs Andrea Conner, employees from the registrar and members from the Physical Plant. 

“There are representatives from key areas across the university,” Gough said. “They bring their input to that meeting, we go over the forecast… then we'll go over all those inputs and make a collective decision on next steps.”

The group consults many different forecasting systems to get the most accurate read. Their most reliable use of weather tracking is from a program called WeatherSentry. According to Gough, it is used by all major sports leagues as well as air traffic control in major cities. Gough credits the system for being more accurate than the National Weather Service.

Gough encourages all students, faculty and staff to download the Marist Safe App, as that is the primary source of communication during inclement weather as well as other campus safety warnings. 

“What's most important is everybody's safety,” Gough said. “So that prioritizes over everything.”