Flood Affects VCSU students

With the recent flood crisis in Valley City, ND, Valley City State University had to make many sacrifices. For the last month and a half many classes at the University have been cancelled due to snow storms and flood issues.

The students at Valley City State University were asked to help the city prepare for the flood. The President of the University, Dr. Steven Shirley, had to make many decisions when asked by the City to help with the flood. He had to cancel many days to have the students help at Sandbag Central.

Many of the days the students and staff of VCSU didn’t know if they were going to have class until a couple hours before their class. Shirley would usually let the students know when classes would be cancelled by emailing them. This worked because all students at VCSU are given a computer with internet access on campus.

After so many days of cancelling class, Steven Shirley decided to not cancel classes and just strongly advised students to help with sandbagging if they are able to.

At this point I maybe had 3 classes since before spring break and many other people I’m sure were in the same boat.

The city decided to build a contingency dike around the VCSU campus to help protect it. This allowed one way for the students that didn’t live on or near campus to get into campus area. Dr. Shirley informed students and staff that there would be no one allowed to drive to the campus themselves and that the college would provide a shuttle bus to drive them from the bubble to campus.

The contingency dikes were planned to stay up for at least two to three weeks.
While this was going on many of the students had left for Easter break. That Monday they decided to cancel classes for the rest of the week. Within that week Dr. Shirley decided to close campus for the rest of the year, leaving students and teachers to finish the year online. All activities such as sports, music, etc. were also canceled.

The students that lived on campus were asked to leave as there was a voluntary evacuation. Many people questioned having classes online, what if people don’t have internet where they were. Other questions also came up about not having campus opened anymore such as jobs students had, what they planned to do with graduation, turning in computers, money that students had a meal plans etc.

I think that the Dr. Shirley, the teachers, and the University is doing the best they can to answer all the questions the students have as well as make it an easier experience for the students. I also think that the teachers are making a lot of adjustment and changes to their classes as many of them are behind. They are trying to prioritize what the students should do the rest of the year.

I also think that Dr. Shirley did a great job communicating with the students, staff, and teachers will this crisis. He did most his communicating by emailing, but he made sure to not only tell us what was going on with the college but also with the city. He also explained himself very well and made his decisions wisely.

VCSU also used other forms of communication such as their Flood Information link on the VCSU Homepage and the Flood Emergency Blog.

All the forms of communication were technology based and were easy for the students to use and keep updated.