On Sunday, University President Michael Adams was playing in the snow like most University students.

He stood on his porch, holding his 13-month-old granddaughter, and watched the snow fall. He put on boots and let her experience her first time in the snow.

His power went out that evening and didn’t return until Tuesday morning, so he stayed at the president’s house to keep her warm.

But on Monday, Adams was driving around the campus in his SUV to determine if the University should open Tuesday.

“I was here at 8:30, drove the entire campus, talked with the police chief, went by the physical plant, talked later with some of our workers and I was out paddling around in it all day until about 1:30,” Adams said in a Tuesday interview with The Red & Black.

Adams decided to open the campus on Tuesday, and makes no apologies.

“I stand by the decision, given the timing, the decisions, and what the weather forecast was saying,” he said. “I think opening today was the right decision, and I think closing yesterday was the right decision, and I don’t think we have anything to apologize for.”

Adams said today’s classes, midterms and various activities on campus were part of the decision.

“This is not high school where you just say, ‘we’re not going to have class today,’” he said. “There are 50 or 500 other activities going on, and a lot of people have an inability to see the University in any way other than what they’re going to do that day.”

Adams said positive and negative comments are part of the discussion, but he was appalled by some.

“The overwhelming majority of the comments have been logical, rational, non-pejorative. That’s fine,” he said. “Anybody can disagree with me, but some of the responses today were not just sophomoric. They were high school sophomoric, and I don’t have a lot of use for that.”

Excerpts from the Red & Black interview:

‘The show must go on’

Adams: “These are hard calls. They’re never perfect. I get a lot of input. I was on the road until 9 or 9:30 last night, and I became convinced in late afternoon and evening that things had melted enough that while there were going to be slip slides and some iced snow to maneuver, it was reasonable in the week of midterms before Spring Break to move the University forward today. I still think that was the right decision. A lot of people have referenced the Clarke County schools decided to close, and that’s for the superintendent to decide. I simply point out that he’s dealing with everyone from 5 years of age to 18. Everybody here is an adult and desires correctly to be treated as such. Other than Clarke County schools, there’s not a single local, state or government office nor business in Athens, to my knowledge, closed today, so I stand by the decision … We advertise ourselves as a residential University, and the overwhelming majority of our students, staff and faculty are in fairly close proximity to the center of campus. I must say thus far I haven’t heard of a single serious accident. I’ve heard of a few slips and falls, and I have great empathy for anybody who’s injured and certainly put that as a major part of the equation,b ut for a city of 50,000 – which is what we are – to shut down under the conditions of today, I still think that was the right call.”

Salting the sidewalks

Adams: “It’s part of the protocol, but it’s not perfect and is never going to be perfect … but I think dealing with that is part of dealing with life, particularly if you’re an adult. In the real world, I think those are reasonable concerns where people need to exercise a high level of caution, as did I. I think most 19-year-olds are capable of maneuvering through a little ice and snow, and I can tell you that thousands of them did yesterday when the University was closed because I saw them out, everywhere they were to be.”

Tom Jackson, vice president for public affairs: “I’ve had people complain to me that they had to go out of their way because of the snow, and I’m thinking, ‘There’s a real life lesson. You have to go out of your way when it snows!’ That’s the way it is, and half the country lives that way. I’ve been involved with the opening and closing for snow days here for 22 years, and we have opened on snowy days and we have closed on sunny days because it’s an imperfect science. Every time, no matter what the call is, there are complaints on the other side. It’s very personal to every individual – everybody’s affected, and they have a personal opinion about it and speak up.”

Trips to the hospital

Adams: “I’m concerned about anybody’s health and well-being, and I hadn’t heard that [students had broken bones] until right now, and I’m sorry to hear it. I don’t know what kind of maladies occur on an average day, to start with in a city of 50,000 people, but that doesn’t mean I’m not unconcerned whether it’s snowing or not. So yeah, I have some empathy and great concern for liability. I’m usually the one somebody thinks they’re going to sue. But, the question is, whether or not these are prudent decisions made with adequate input.”

Campus Transit delays

Adams: “There’s no way anyone could have foreseen that the buses would have had trouble. But they did have trouble getting up the incline where the buses are kept on Riverbend Road, which delayed them some, and there were people who were planning to ride for early 8 a.m. classes, and the routes were late and not fully operational until 8:30.”

Miller Learning Center damages

Adams: “There is some water damage to ceiling tiles, no structural damage other than the portico that was impacted, and I think some water has run down a few walls. There’ll have to be some repair, but [classes will return to the rooms] in a few days and certainly by the time people get back from spring break. There’s not any serious long-term damage.”

Attendance policy Tuesday

Provost Arnett Mace sent an e-mail to deans, directors and departments heads, saying faculty should give consideration to students who were unable to attend classes before noon.

Many professors were also unable to teach their classes and had substitutes.

Child care for professors is “something I’m sensitive to,” Adams said. But “we take the obligation to be at work and to make special provisions if necessary very seriously. If someone can’t make special provisions and takes a leave day, nobody’s going to shoot them, and they’re not going to be subjected to any penalties, and I think what the provost was saying was to use common sense. My view is, if you can do something like get to work without endangering yourself or your family, you ought to go to work.”

Make up the missed day?

Adams: “There are not built-in snow days in our calendar. We could take the reading day, and we’ll have some discussion about that, but our normal pattern has been to have the faculty adjust. It’s easier to adjust Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes that meet more often than Tuesday, Thursday classes.”

For the future

Adams: “Sure, we’ll do more, and it’ll be better tomorrow than it was today and better the next day than it was then until most everybody heads out of here by the end of the week … We did deviate from policy this time. Because this presented greater challenges, more snow, coming off the weekend where some people were off campus – in both occasions we made the decision 12 hours sooner than we normally do so people could plan. There were people probably on Sunday anticipating whether to drive back from Atlanta or wherever that as soon as it became clear mid to late afternoon that this was going to be more than the typical inch of snowfall in Athens, we made that decision earlier. Last night, to give people time to prepare, we did it again 12 hours sooner than the normal policy. We deviated favorably, and these things are always clearer in 20/20 hindsight, but the best meterologist in the area predicted eight inches for Athens, Ga. Every case is different.”

Adams: “Let’s all admit, the kind of snow we got here Sunday in Athens, Georgia, may be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. If this occurs once every 70 years, I’ll let whoever is president in 2070 worry about the next one. The only thing I reject is the notion that there’s some callous process without regard for anyone’s well-being, and the truth is anything but that.”