Hazardous weather conditions caused a meltdown for more than just on-campus classes last week. Online, DVD and televised classes also found a few kinks in the works.

Carolyn Degginger, senior secondary education major, lost power from Friday, Jan. 12 to Thursday, Jan 18 and again for several hours the next day. Her phone service was disrupted that Wednesday and has not been restored.

“It melted some of the phone lines together.” Degginger said of the explanation she got when she called her phone company.

Electric poles were down and a large tree blocked the road for several days near her home outside Neosho. Degginger took refuge at a friend’s house and once classes resumed she found her online instructor.

“He didn’t have internet either,” she said.

Degginger plans to do her online class in computer labs on campus until her phone service is restored.

“They have made extraordinary efforts to get to computers and get the stuff done,” said Dr. Virginia Laas, professor of history. Only three of her roughly 40 online students were unable to complete assignments on schedule and after the others were able to contact her, they worked out special arrangements.

With the campus closed, instructors were unable to come in for live broadcast classes, which puts television classes on the same schedule as non-distance classes.

Although watching class on TV can be a boon to students who do not want to brave the storm, submitting assignments can be a challenge.

Robin Douglas, television technical specialist for Southern, posts each televised class on Blackboard as streaming video.

“If a student has an on-campus class and can’t get here then she’s missed her class, but with a TV or Internet class she still has contact with her instructor,” Douglas said. “If they have a high speed Internet connection.”

While he could not stop the storm, Dr. Jerry Williams, director of lifelong learning,

did what he could.

“The one thing we did do was send out notice on Blackboard that school had been cancelled,” Williams said.

Mike Moss, night custodian for Webster Hall, was called out on Monday, Jan 15, to try to clear the campus. The ice was an average of 4 inches to 6 inches thick, according to Moss. He said it was a foot deep where the freezing rain had run off and pooled.

While contractors were called in to clear sections of the parking lot with front-end loaders, Moss and his co-workers chipped their way down the sidewalk with picks and shovels.

“You can’t just scoop it up. You’ve gotta break it up, chunk it up.” Moss said.

Dr. Laura Adkins, assistant professor of mathematics, was unable to contact her students when she lost Internet service for four days.

“I think there are still pockets where students do not have power,” Adkins said. When classes resumed Monday, two of her more than 100 on-campus students were still without power and not all of her online students had contacted her yet.

Adkins said she would extend deadlines for her online quizzes due to the outages and said students should not worry.

“It is not that big of a disaster to not have met for a week,” Adkins said. “We are not so far behind that we cannot catch up.”