Thomas Cantrell

Assoc. Viewpoints Editor

SnowYay

Every year we must brace ourselves for the most dangerous season, winter. These three months reveal that all of our advanced technology and architecture are nothing compared to the wrath of Mother Nature. As the temperature drops to freezing levels, the normal weather patterns we enjoy the rest of the year become dangerous alternatives.

Rain no longer comes to give our plants water, but something much worse comes instead. Snow, sleet, and hail attack from the clouds above us. Snow takes away power from buildings, causes frostbite and hypothermia, and covers the roads in dangerous layers of ice. The world outside becomes so dangerous that it the only safe option is to not venture into it at all.

That’s why it’s important that schools issue school days for their students. You would think that since we designed buildings that are able to withstand earthquakes that some frozen water wouldn’t be much of a problem. Snow may appear harmless and innocent, but it actually is quite dangerous. This is why snow days are so important to have.

I, a person who prefers to live, will always choose to stay at home and be safe than to risk my entire life driving through the snow to school. I value my education and don’t miss school if I don’t feel it to be absolutely necessary to ensure my safety.

If I slip and fall on a small patch of ice, then I tremble when I imagine what would happen if I were to encounter any ice on the road. I have no problem making the journey to school through the heaviest of rain or the brightest of sunny days, but once the thermometer dips below 32 Fahrenheit, I refuse to jeopardize my safety.

Thanks to snow days, I won’t have to risk life and limb just for single day of school. Anyone who has seen the Star Wars movies knows the danger of the cold. Luke Skywalker was closer to being killed by the freezing temperatures on the ice planet of Hoth than by Darth Vader and the entire Empire. Snow was more dangerous than the Emperor, a man who could shoot lighting bolts from his fingertips. Skywalker even had highly advanced technology capable of interplanetary travel still almost died by the cruel hand of Mother Nature.

I understand why some people aren’t aware of the danger of the snow. Today’s society has desensitized us to icy evil. Ice skating, ice cream, and even ice cubes have made most people forget how dangers winter brings. Thankfully, we have snow days to be our guardians and protect us from evil nature.

Emily Bloomfield

Viewpoints Editor

SnowNay

Tick tock tick tock. Ah the lovely and envied sound of the clock counting down our last high school semester until our graduation caps catch the final breeze before returning to the ground. Oh, but what’s that?

A stream of notifications temporarily disrupt this daydream; the phone rings, the TV flashes with a new update, my twitter feed blows up with three dominating words: NO SCHOOL CLARK COUNTY.

The ticking fades and gets slower until eventually dissolves into a deathlike silence as the best day of a high school senior’s life gets shoveled back snow day after snow day.

One look outside should explain our cancelled school day; however, the cracked black top is still black and the streetlights aren’t illuminating any falling liquid. Now I don’t have a problem with necessary snow days; I have a problem with “a light dusting that I can still see the cracks in my driveway” kind of snow day.

An inch of snow, no matter how dangerous society has conditioned it to be, does not warrant an entire instructional day to be cancelled and even more annoyingly to be tacked on the end of the year. Let me go call my entire family again reschedule my graduation- again.

Snow days take away valuable instruction time we may be wishing we had gotten when sitting in the middle of an AP Calculus exam. And then to make matters worse said lost instructional time is a day added to the end of our year, which then consists of PG movie watching and amateur card games- quite instructional if one is learning to count how many consecutive games of solitaire they’ve won.

I push back a cringe as I think about how cities such as New York, who completely function in knee-deep snow, laugh at our small town nightmare. My education and senioritis only has so long before time runs out; let us not waste it on a snow day. Tick tock tick tock.