Heavy snow, wind, and ice has plagued the entire town of Quincy, Illinois so far this winter and especially in the month of February.

It has resulted in temporary closures of businesses, restaurants, and schools around the town when the weather comes through town.

Quincy University has faced its own challenges in keeping students in classes despite the conditions, over the course of two days on February 2 and 3 the campus was closed down and classes for those days were moved online if the professors chose to do so. 

Some classes continued remotely through Zoom or other online meeting and chat rooms while others were flat out canceled. 

Regardless of whether classes for all the students were fully canceled or not, it gave the students of the university a lot of free time to do what they pleased.

Mason Marano capitalized on the closures and not having classes by staying warm indoors, enjoying the day playing video games with friends who are also students of the university.

“I am from Texas so to see more than 2 inches of snow is mind blowing to me. I see why people complain about weather like this now! There was no chance I was gonna be going outside in the snow to do anything, it can wait till it’s warmer,” Marano said. 

Not everyone was able to enjoy their days off as they hoped to, Kade Beaton, despite the conditions, still had to travel from his dorm in Helien Hall to the Student Success Center located across campus to study for tests and work on upcoming classwork. 

“Unfortunately even though class is canceled it doesn’t mean school as a whole is put on pause. Things keep moving and I was one of the few that it was applicable to, having to do homework for philosophy and prepare for my public speaking speech that I have to do at the start of next week,” Beaton said. 

Beaton wasn’t the only one who was mainly stuck doing homework and schoolwork in order to stay caught up with classes despite having to meet in person for them, but they certainly weren’t the winners of the snow days.

Jayme Brain was among those who could be deemed the “winners” of the snow days.

“It was just a random snowboard that was left behind by one of the former lacrosse coaches when he moved out of Quincy, so I knew I could find and have some fun with it for sure,” Brain said. 

Alongside Brain, a handful of his teammates all gathered together with snow shovels and all to try and make snow forts and snowmen, but when they learned the snow wasn’t quite tacky enough to stick together in mass clumps they began to just make one huge pile of snow.

Mainly using what the plows had pushed out of the Willer parking lot into a huge pile, they made a jump at the bottom of the mound.

Attempting to ride down the pile on the snowboard and jumping off of the ramp at the end, recreating nostalgic childhood memories as a young adult. 

This isn’t the last circumstance where the university and town as a whole is supposed to experience severe winter conditions, so it has to be seen the precautions or plans that are put into place as word comes around that another winter storm is deciding to blow into town.