In the past three weeks, campus has been hit with ten major snowstorms. When snow strikes, day students, who comprise over 25 percent of the student body, are encouraged to leave campus as soon as possible, to avoid the low visibility and icy roads that make their commute dangerous and impractical. Some day students, worried about risking their safety, even choose to skip school entirely and suffer from missed class time and assessments.
Andover prides itself on having granted a mere four snow days since its establishment, but holding class during snowstorms forces day students to choose between their safety and keeping themselves abreast of academic commitments. One simple solution to the dilemma, dorm sleepovers, would allow day students to attend classes without having to worry about how they will get home safely. We must create a system that provides for the quick and convenient arrangement of sleepovers as necessary, when hazardous storms unpredictably strike.
Such a system might involve pairing day students with boarders, who would act as “sleepover buddies,” or with dorms. Thus, a student would always sleep over in the same dorm and would know where to go in case of a weather emergency. This system would also give day students a place to keep things like a change of clothes or toiletries, which they would need if spending the night at school.
The administration will likely raise two counterarguments to this sleepover solution: first, that such sleepovers would easily become social engagements that would prevent students from completing their work on what would otherwise be regular school nights; second, that it is unsafe to have so many students staying in dorms, many of which are already filled to maximum capacity.
In response to the first point, I would argue that Andover students are known for their commitment to their work and also for how stressed they become when said work cannot be completed. Besides, we are a boarding school. We live together—every night is essentially a sleepover—yet students still manage to finish their work. In terms of safety, it is important to make sure that day students are evenly distributed among dorms. Additionally, day students could be set up in Common Rooms with cots or futons, decreasing the number of students actually occupying dorm rooms.
In the future, the school might even consider building a “temporary” dorm on campus, where day students could spend the night during snowstorms. For now, however, sleepovers are the safest, easiest, and most reasonable solution. Let’s just hope we will not need to have any.
