What happens when PTS doesn’t cancel classes after 18″ of snow…
February 13, 2006
It’s ridiculous when the seminary doesn’t cancel 8am classes. PTS Office Staff, Professional Staff, Administrators, Library Staff and Facilities Staff don’t start work tomorrow until 10am, yet they expect students to show up for 8am classes. Something had to be done. And it was. Kellen thought he had the full story and blogged it first, but here at pomomusings, you’ll get the fuller Truth and nothing but the truth [although, his pictures are much better, check them out here]. Enjoy my pictures below.
Update: Click below to see what the official PTS response was to this action, as they mentioned some "mischievous students" on the website:
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Adam Walker Cleaveland: 
February 13th, 2006 at 2:52 am
beautiful work. seriously, great photos. those trees look very tim burton.
February 13th, 2006 at 5:26 am
What happens when PTS doesn’t cancel classes after 18″ of snow…
…students act like asses and barricade the doors.
February 13th, 2006 at 7:13 am
love it. i only wish i lived some place where this was a possibility.
February 13th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Actually, we DO have class this morning at 8:00 a.m. So this post is actually a bit misleading….
Full[er] Truth my arse. ; )
February 13th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Of course, someone forgot to barricade the BACK DOOR, and the SIDE DOOR… brilliant.
February 13th, 2006 at 8:59 am
yeah, PS — GO TO CLASS — it’s in session, and i’m sitting in it right now.
and, by the way, the maintenence people now have to dig out the door. more work for them.
brilliant.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:52 am
The reason the administration does not have to be in until 10 is that they do not live on the Princeton campus as most students and professors do. I cannot believe you did that. Not funny. Stuff like this used to make me really mad because the people who did it never end up cleaning it up and the maintenance staff does. It really sucks for them, but apparently not for you. Also you could really damage the doors on the building. That building is really old and historical and look what you did to it.
February 13th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Administrative people actually have to drive to campus. Students and professors do not. It’s that simple. There are plenty of things to gripe about seminary, not having classes cancelled on a perfectly sunny day should not be one of them.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Administrative people actually have to drive to campus. Students and professors do not.
Actually, Gary, a sizeable number of students don’t live on campus and have to get here. The shuttle was slow this morning — causing CRW folks to be 30 minutes late to my precept at 9:00. And a woman in that group had to drive from PA — a normally one hour trip took her TWO hours, and when she arrived (at 8:30 a.m.) she found a covered parking deck — not exactly what she was hoping for given the promises made by the admin email. She was insulted that the administration lucked out but she didn’t.
Personally, I don’t think it sucks for us who live on campus. But it does suck that people off campus had to be here by 8:00 for class. Unreasonable.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:26 am
kellen: amen.
everyone else: go look for a sense of humor.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:27 am
and again, commentors on this blog show how uptight they are. get get get over yourselves
February 13th, 2006 at 11:10 am
It was a funny prank. The sun will clean it up. One time I let a squirrel lose in the Baylor cafeteria. That was funny, too.
February 13th, 2006 at 11:43 am
Hey John, was it Penland or Alexander? Sounds hilarious.
February 13th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Penland. And it was a thing of beauty.
February 13th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Now that’s just awesome!!!!!
February 13th, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Hilarious! Great work.
Regarding the serious comments here: Can we not laugh? For what it is worth, I became good friends with many of the fine staff who worked as custodians and groundskeepers at PTS during my time there. I sometimes asked whether some messy activity caused a hardship (and often students went out of their way to help clean up when that happened). Without exception, when students did things that were part of student life, the custodians I knew laughed right along with them. They knew they were working at a school, and frankly the students generally took pretty good care to maintain positive relationships and be kind and thoughtful toward the support staff. I think it is possible to be inconsiderate of our staff by making them out to be robots who have no senses of humor. The ones I have known would have appreciated this as much as anyone. I can think of at least one who would have joined right in the shovelling.
February 13th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
PTS brian,
I appreciate your comment. Yet let me offer a bit of my perspective on this specific issue. I went out of my way to chat with one of the maintenence workers who dealt with this morning. Trying to ask without bias, I simply asked, “What did you think of the prank with the snow?” and this worker said “I didn’t understand it; it caused a lot of extra work for me. They thought it was a joke, but it wasn’t a joke.” This isn’t my opinion about what someone might think, but rather a reporting of what someone DID say to me today. It seems that the facilities staff might have a wide variety of opinions on this issue, just as we have represented here.
February 13th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Of course, I do not think Dr. Torrance or Dean O’Grady was out there cleaning up the mess this morning, but the facility staff.
The same facility staff who had to be up at 3am on Sunday morning cleaning off the paths, while the students slept soundly in there heated beds.
February 13th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
…ah see that has already been mentioned…
February 13th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
Love the prank, wasn’t expecting such backlash though. Lighten up people.
February 13th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Traci, I appreciate your non-hypothetical true-life response. Duly noted. I do think it would be good for those who did this (and I maintain that it is hilarious), having had their laugh, to either clean it up or make it up in an appropriate way to the custodial staff who had to do so.
February 13th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
Adam, perhaps you take some of the fun out of it. (And I’ve got to admit, when I saw the pic of Stuart, I was almost rolling on the floor!)
Assuming that you’re are one of those building the baricade, don’t you know that part of the whole thing is anonimity? It lets everyone wonder who the “assholes” were that did something so outrageous. Come on man… posting this on your blog ruins half the fun! (And besides the lame excuse that you did it because the admin. didn’t cancel classes — hell… we just cut them without bitching about a reason.)
(I will agree with a few coments… I do hope those who did it WERE willing to clean up their mess afterwards.)
But don’t jump the gun on all the fun like this. Let people stew a bit. Makes it all the more “special.” Like “some group” who didn’t like the way the rat in the basement on Hodge was painted in 1984, so the night before graduation, they painted the whole freakin’ thing white, with an airbrushed blue border that looked 3-dimensional from the landings above. It even got written up in the “Spire” by faculty members (under the title “vandalism to the rat”)… but we’ve been keeping some folks in suspense for almost 25 years!
Anyway… I kinda wish we’d had the creativity to do this when I was there!
RPS