Some Have to Work on Snow Days

DULUTH, Minn. — Isaac Kasper oversees maintenance operations on UMD’s campus. He was up at 6 a.m. Monday morning.

Just last week, he and his team were preparing for Spring. Now they’re back to shoveling snow.

“We were cleaning up planting beds, mulching, picking up brush and leaves and doing spring type work last week. Putting seed and soil down in spots that were thawed out. Getting fields ready to play softball and baseball. And now we’re a blizzard,” said Kasper.

His day began knowing he had to prepare his crews for the approaching storm. In years past, he and his team would be up and working as early as 2 or 3 a.m. But this day, because classes are cancelled, the campus was still and unoccupied.

“Quiet. It was awesome. Normally the university is starting to get pretty busy at 6am, but today with it closed it was nice and quiet.so we could do our work before people start to show up.”

Kasper says while we haven’t had a bad storm until now, this kind of weather has been the norm in years past. Timing is everything.

“If we don’t shovel today, then tomorrow it will be too much to handle. If classes resume tomorrow, we’ll have snow drifts and 10 inches it would 14 or 20 inches of snow plus drifting, it would take hours and hours.”

Hours people shouldn’t take for granted on a campus with over 10 miles of sidewalks, several miles of roads and acres parking lots.

“Modern snow removal technology de-icers are so good people assume it’s pretty easy to get safe roads and sidewalks and safe roads and safe parking lots that people are accustomed to, but it’s still a lot of work. ”

And that’s where Mechanical Engineering students Jake Schwaja and Evan Kobler come in. Kobler was hopeful the winter season was over since they haven’t been doing much shoveling lately.

“It’s been pretty dry so far. We’ve been racking leaves and silly stuff like that. That’s not really winter jobs.” said Kobler.

Schwaja added, “I’ve been working this job for three years, this is what we have been doing up until March.”

They do the job for the money, but both agree it’s also just nice to have a change of scenery.

“We have sites off of just this campus, and other places we get to go to. So, it’s interesting…something to do other than just studying,” said Kobler.

Meanwhile, freshman students and roommates Abigail Hanson and Abby Grafmyre, were just out in the snow for the fun of it.

“We are looking for some sleds to go sledding!” exclaimed Hanson.

Grafmyre said, “It was a little pent-up in there. We wanted to get out a little bit.”

But they were forced to scramble a bit because they had already given up on winter.

“She got the sleds out of her car and brought them back home because we thought the snow was over,” said Hanson.

“And here we are,” Grafmyre concluded.

In describing the day, perhaps Grafmyre said it best.

“Enjoy the snow while we have it!”