When Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton hit, campus closure announcements not only affected students, but also another crucial group — the faculty.
Some faculty feel the university gave sufficient notice, while others believe the communication could have been improved.
When a storm approaches Gainesville, UF administration immediately gets to work, according to UF spokesperson Steve Orlando. The UF Department of Emergency Management prepares an emergency operations team, which includes about 40 to 50 people from various areas across campus. It’s made up of employees involved in emergency services and academic faculty.
The team evaluates the storm’s potential impact and provides recommendations to the policy group, which is made up of the university president, key cabinet members and other advisers. The policy group then reviews the recommendation and makes a decision regarding campus closure.
Jeanna Mastrodicasa, the Chief Operating Officer for the UF Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences, serves as an alternate to both the policy group and the emergency operations team. The group’s decision comes down to the timing of the storm because so many issues need to be accounted for, such as UF faculty who work in research locations around the state, she said.
“It is just a large challenge from the IFAS perspective because we do have employees in all 67 counties,” she said. “We do have employees in all kinds of locations, and so it's a balancing act to make sure we're inclusive and supportive for those we don't see every day.”
While UF has a system to deal with hurricanes and other natural disasters, Mastrodicasa said there are many moving parts that are uncontrollable due to the unpredictability of storms. Hurricane Milton left Alachua County largely untouched, but Hurricane Helene ushered in widespread power outages that left parts of campus damaged and in the dark.
Orlando, the UF spokesperson, said several factors must be taken into consideration before determining campus closures, including safety, academics and the aftermath of the storm. He said the university administration aims to strike a balance with these issues, even amid considerable uncertainty.
“It's not always perfect, because it's not an exact science, but we try to take all the data into consideration to make the best decision possible,” Orlando said.
Some professors, like Keith Schneider, a UF professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, said the university provided a sufficient amount of time for faculty and students to prepare for the storms. Being situated in Florida, the university is well-equipped to navigate annual hurricane seasons.
“Considering the path and everything that was out there, I don't think they waited any longer than they needed to,” Schneider said. “And I don't think there is anything wrong with what the university did.”
Jack Davis, a UF history professor and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities, said because hurricanes are a waiting game, the situation must be carefully deliberated to ensure the appropriate announcement is made.
“I’ve been at UF 21 years and through numerous hurricanes, and I've always thought that UF has done a fine job keeping the campus community informed,” Davis said.
Although UF announced a two-day campus closure for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, Davis said many of his students took the entire week off during the storms — some to evacuate or help families in impacted areas.
He found ways to make accommodations for these students, he added, and said the university has supported allowing students the time to return home if necessary. He received an email from UF encouraging professors to remain understanding and mindful of students who may be facing storm-related challenges before and after a hurricane makes landfall.
In a campus-wide email from interim president Kent Fuchs on Oct. 10, students and faculty who were affected by the recent hurricanes were encouraged to apply for a grant through Aid-a-Gator.
“Both Kent Fuchs and [Provost] Joe Glover genuinely care about the welfare of the students, and they want to ensure that they have the best information to make the best decision they can,” Davis said. “I think the welfare of the students is high on their priority list — welfare in terms of their safety, but [also] welfare in terms of their education.”
Jeffrey Lindsey, the UF director of the Fire and Emergency Services program, said UF could have made a quicker decision about campus closure for Hurricane Helene, but he was satisfied with the university’s response to Hurricane Milton.
Despite believing the response to Hurricane Helene could have been improved, Lindsey said he still thinks the university gave students enough notice to allow them to take necessary action.
“As we continue to experience some of these storms, each time, they'll improve and get better with some of the things that they're doing,” he said.
Lindsey suggested that a system sending notifications 24 or 48 hours before a closure would be helpful for students and faculty, allowing them to anticipate the announcement and be better prepared.
John Banko, a UF finance professor, said hurricanes and campus closures can impact the course schedule in unprecedented ways.
One of Banko’s classes has three exams, and he offers a primary date and an alternate date for each of them. The primary date is the official date of the exam, and Banko advises students to take it then. If students opt for the alternate date and encounter any issues, they risk receiving a zero, and he will be less flexible in accommodating them.
However, with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, Banko found himself at a crossroads. For exam one, the primary date was Sept. 23. Just over half of the class took the test, resulting in many students needing to take the exam on the alternate date, which was approximately two weeks later on Oct. 8. However, because Hurricane Milton was expected to make landfall soon, many students reached out to Banko and told him they were unable to take the exam, despite making the decision to skip the primary date.
“What I'm dealing with at this real, real micro level is these things that they're trying to deal with at this big macro level,” Banko said. “Like hey, there's this institution that needs to keep moving, and hopefully we're not ignoring the individual along the way, but I think the individuals feel that every so often.”
While Banko sympathizes with the struggles UF administration faces in determining campus closure, he said more thought can be put into certain hurricane-related announcements. On the morning of Oct. 10, he received an email from UF telling students that if they have academic issues caused by the hurricane, they should contact their instructors.
“I'm like, ‘No, no, no, no, I do not want 1,300 students emailing me, because some generic emails said to email me,’” Banko said. “And I think at times (…) perhaps we're not thinking through the impact of what we're saying.”
Another faculty member, Jason Von Meding, a UF professor in the Rinker School of Construction Management and a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience, also said he has concerns regarding the university’s response timeline.
Von Meding previously collaborated with former UF professor, Amer Abukhalaf, to expand language translation for emergency responses because they discovered people's perception of risk varies based on their understanding of the hazard in question. Von Meding said that in some languages, there are different meanings for the word cyclone or hurricane, which creates misunderstandings about the severity of the situation.
“There's so much diverse need across the student body and staff and faculty that a very simplistic communication system can’t cater to,” Von Meding said. “If you're not thinking about that deeply and having a more holistic communication system, you're putting some people at more risk.”
When they first started their research at UF about five years ago, Von Meding and Abukhalaf discussed the issue of a language barrier with the university’s management of communication. However, the university said implementing the research wasn’t feasible due to a lack of resources.
“You show what's a priority to you by how you invest resources, so UF is kind of showing that it's not a priority for them,” Von Meding said.
Von Meding said addressing this issue requires significant time and energy, but suggested that modern technology, such as artificial intelligence, could provide assistance.
“Think of all the funding we have for AI and all the excitement about it,” he said. “We have so many AI experts on campus now, like hundreds in every field. So mobilizing some of that excitement and funding around technology to actually make people safer seems like a really good idea.”
Contact Annie Wang at awang@alligator.org. Follow her on X @wynwg.
Annie Wang is a sophomore journalism student and the Fall 2024 University Administration Reporter. She previously wrote for the University Desk as a General Assignment reporter. In her spare time, she can be found reading and writing book reviews.
