Almost all day Tuesday, DeKalb – along with most of the Midwest – was slammed with sheets of snow. NIU was one of a scant few universities brave enough to stay open – Northwestern University, Western Illinois University and the University of Illinois-Champaign were all closed due to the weather.

NIU did cancel classes, effective at 6 p.m. But for most of the day, commuters still risked the highway slalom to get to class.

It was good the university decided to cancel classes after 6 p.m. Many commuters only take classes in the evening, so that saved them the trip, but many students braved the journey in the morning only to find their professors did not share their dedication.

As the day went on and snow began to pile up to form dunes reminiscent of what you’d find in the Sahara, drivers faced more than an annoyance – they faced serious risks to their well-being. If such a large number of teachers chose to cancel classes, the university could at least have followed suit.

Press releases of accident reports from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office came in all day. Most were about cars losing control in the snow and ending up in a ditch, cars hitting a sign post or cars colliding with one another.

Professors across campus canceled individual classes. Notes were left on classroom doors telling the students – who battled the forces of nature to get there – that their struggle was for naught.

Many of the classes that were in session had low attendance or teachers whose main topic was how they didn’t want to be there.

Students with classes requiring attendance may have showed up and wasted their time because it was canceled. Others who planned on showing up couldn’t because of the snow and may be punished for it.

What made this so exasperating for students was the state of the campus. The wind was so powerful you could see people visibly fighting it. The added snow meant people walking against the wind were blinded as well, leading to the occasional human-on-human collision. The roads and sidewalks were tended to, but most of the clean-up efforts were futile because of how much the snow was drifting.

The problem with leaving it up to individual professors to cancel classes is the students still have to make the dangerous walk to class to see a piece of paper on the door to tell them to turn back. The university needs to institute some kind of notification system that makes it easier for professors to let their students know when they aren’t even going to show up so that such potentially dangerous confusion can be avoided in the future. Or it could always cancel classes.