One would be hard pressed to imagine a more stressful academic period at Saint Mary's and Notre Dame than the week of final exams. But last December this period became even more stressful when snow canceled the Tuesday, Dec. 12 exams. The cancelation was the first time the University halted final exams in nine years, according to University Registrar Harold Pace.

"It was strictly a safety concern for faculty and off campus students." said Pace. "It was frustrating because we knew that the undergraduates were ready to take their exams and many were on campus, but we weren't sure about the safety of faculty and students coming from off campus and we didn't want to endanger their lives."

According to Pace, the decision to cancel exams first became a concern Monday afternoon when South Bend Mayor Steve Lueke issued a ruling that all non-emergency vehicles stay off the roads.

While the decision to reschedule exams may have prevented car accidents on the snow covered South Bend streets, it threw a monkey wrench into the studying habits of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's students.

"What was also frustrating was that I was mentally prepared to take it that day, and the cancellation threw off my other studying and focus for that exam," said freshman Claire Reisinger.

Pace said that there is a team of Notre Dame administrators and security officials who keep appraised of weather forecasts for the area and road conditions and then make the decision whether to close the University. At approximately 5 p.m. Dec. 11, weather forecasts showed that there would be heavy snows all night, and because of this the team decided to meet at 4 a.m. to make the decision.

"I asked them to include me in the meeting because of the impact cancellation would have on exams," said Pace. The team gathered by phone in the morning and received word from the city was that roads were in poor conditions and impassable. Consequently, the team made the decision to close the school.

In a move designed to minimize disruptions of students with travel plans on Saturday, Pace decided along with other Notre Dame administrators, to extend the time period for exams on Thursday and Friday which resulted in some students having exams with unusual time slots of 10 p.m. until midnight and others having more than three exams in a 24-hour period.

"We felt really bad about not being able to be able to enforce the rule, but in order to finish exams by Friday so that students would not have to forfeit their Saturday travel plans, it was our only solution," said Pace.

For freshman Lisa Chambelle, whose two Tuesday exams were cancelled, Friday proved a full day because she had to take the two rescheduled exams and one that was originally scheduled for Friday. "I started testing at 8 a.m. And ended at 9:30 p.m. At the end I was stressed and exhausted," she said.

The decision to reschedule incited a strong student response over the possibility of the new exam schedule conflicting with traveling plans.

"After I first sent out the list of rescheduled exam times I got over 100 e-mails from students asking what they should do about conflicts," Pace said. Basically my advice was to ask the professor and the faculty were allowed to have a lot of options. It was amazing because the next day I did not receive any e-mails."

Pace attributed the drop in e-mails to the faculty's flexibility. "I think the faculty really made it work and had flexibility so that students could get their exams done and keep their travel plans," said Pace.

Jill Boroniec, a senior pre-professional student whose Anatomy exam was cancelled, agreed. "My final was rescheduled for 4:30-6:30 on Friday but about 1/2 the class e-mailed my professor that they had a conflict. He e-mailed us and said that the final was optional and we could take the final and have that count, or our grade could be based on the three exams we had already taken. I thought he was really accommodating," said Boroniec.

Senior Marry Ellen Goodman also had a professor who was flexible about her cancelled Tuesday exam. He e-mailed the students the same exam that they were supposed to take and made it an open notes-open book exam. The professor also advised them to "Have a cup of hot cocoa while you take the test."

"I thought it was really nice of my professor to let me do the exam by e-mail instead of having to take it late at night on the re-scheduled day," said Goodman.

While the sudden weather conditions caught the administration off guard this year, Pace said future measures will be taken to ensure that a specific plan will be present in the event of another similar situation

"We're going to wok on this for the spring, though hopefully we won't still have snow, and we'll have ideas and be better about communicating them in a timely fashion which we could improve on," said Pace.

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