Robbie:
My thought before sleep: snow day. My first thought when I awake: snow day. It’s like I never slept. Check email. Yes! Campus Emergency Notification. The word emergency has never sounded so peaceful.
To all those complaining about the abundance of snow days: You’re not living right. Let me tell you why.
Snow days exist so you can binge an entire season of The Office, down a whole party bag of all-dressed chips and drink five liters of tea. But that’s not all you can do.
Health nut? Go shovel your drive way! Good neighbour? Come shovel my driveway! Sense of adventure? Try walking to Sobeys and not dying.
Reawaken your inner child by frolicking in the snow. There’s nothing more nostalgic than making snowmen, snow angels and snow demon-babies. It’s time to spark the old Harrington-Vanier rivalry with a snowball fight, eh? Or, if you’re one of those “nerds” take the day to “catch up” on all those “readings” you just “have” to do.
But the list doesn’t end there! Are you a 20-year-old musical prodigy undiscovered to yourself? Learn the recorder, the euphonium, the triangular bell. Want to join the circus? Book a unicycle lesson from Charlotte Schwarz!
What? You think that’s everything you could do on a snow day? No way José! Learn a new word: The feinschmecker learned a new recipe on their snow day. Set the world record for longest time without blinking and breathing simultaneously. Start your stop-motion adaptation of the Silmarillion, you’re so creative, you! Get Joe Fresh on the phone because everyone’s going to want your new swimwear line, Freddy’s Beach. SAVE THE WHALES!
Ultimately, the snow day is a day of freedom. It’s a chance to do what you couldn’t yesterday and can’t tomorrow. It’s like Feb. 29, you don’t know how, but suddenly time has been added to your life. There’s nothing you can’t do on a snow day, except go to class of course.
Matt:
Picture this: You spend hours deciding which restaurant to go to and eventually settle on the one that’s right for you. You take your seat and choose your meal carefully. The server requires you pay the bill before receiving your food – weird, but you comply. Your meal finally arrives, but there’s a gaping hole in your tandoori chicken. Turns out Boris Johnson took a huge bite of your food and you still need to pay the same price.
St. Thomas is the sweet tandoori chicken. Snow days are the Boris Johnson: pale, austere, bitter and untamed.
It is economically irrational to rejoice at the advent of a snow day. We have already made our financial contributions; less instruction days only heighten the price of each class. Benjamin Franklin once wrote an investment in knowledge pays the best interest, and I’m sure our crippling debts would love a few more Franklins in the bank account.
The survival and flourishing of the 21st century requires a politically engaged electorate of critical thinkers. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1938 address to instructors and patrons of American schools stated that “the real safeguard to democracy, then, is education.” Our liberal arts education moulds us into free citizens incapable of mindless servitude.
John Hope Franklin articulated higher education plays an important role in solving the major problems that beset our countries and our world. Weigh these interests against those of a lazy snow day. Is the future of our world worth the sacrifice?
Every moment of our education grows us into perceptive, prudent and preppy petunias. Snow days cause stagnancy, insensibility, stupidity and political serfdom.
S.9 of the Charter protects us from the arbitrary imprisonment. s.10(b) gives us the right “to retain and instruct … without delay.” The snow day blatantly bastardizes our most fundamental rights.
In the words of Franklin the cartoon turtle, “Snow days are nothing but calamity.”
