By Jesse Bade

Staff Writer

The snowstorm from this past weekend scathed the New England and New York area with several feet of snow, following the devastation of Superstorm Sandy less than four months ago.

The storm, nicknamed “Nemo,” struck Friday night and lasted into Saturday. While it forced many students to remain inside their homes, others were left stranded.

Karen Chlosta, freshman, braved the storm for a concert in New York City despite warnings to stay indoors.

“I went to go see Jukebox the Ghost,” Chlosta said. Although the concert ended by 11:00 p.m. and Chlosta left Penn Station by 1:00 a.m., she and her friends did not return to campus for another three hours.

“I think we started heading home around one and then we did not get home until around 4:30,” Chlosta said.

Chlosta said that a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) conductor told them that in order to get to Mineola, they would have to transfer trains at Jamaica. Originally, the wait was supposed to be 10 minutes. But 10 minutes quickly turned into one hour. Before they knew it, the train was cancelled. They were stranded.

“We waited probably a solid half-hour [to] 45 minutes and then we decided to take a cab,” Chlosta said. The cab ride took approximately two-and-a-half hours as they traveled through the storm.

“I think because of the time it was out and the road conditions — I mean the streets weren’t plowed at all — it made [the cab ride] a little more nerve-racking,” Chlosta said. However, she and her friends made it back to campus safely. Chlosta said that the concert was worth it.

Other students experienced similar problems as a result of the snow. Britni Hicks, senior, was not able to go to her internship at Cosmopolitan Magazine as a result of the storm.

Hicks said she was sent home early on Friday by her employer as an attempt to prevent people from experiencing snow issues. Her Saturday shift was cancelled completely.

“My boss for my Saturday internship is from Connecticut and she was snowed in,” Hicks said. “She contacted me Friday night and told me not to come, and our roads were barely plowed so we could barely get out.”

Hicks lives in a house off campus. She and her housemates bunkered down in response to the storm warnings and waited it out in the comfort of their home. Others did not have that luxury.

Samuel Little, senior, stayed at Dempster Hall for a portion of the storm because the power went out in his house.

“We literally saw our power going out,” Little said. “The transformer right outside my house started blowing up, giving off almost fireworks.”

He and a few of his friends then went to Dempster Hall to charge up their electronics and wait for the power to return. They were able to use Dempster because they are WRHU members with swipe access.

Little commented on how impressed he was that the power was back in two hours, rather than the three weeks it took after Sandy.

“We had the cops and fire department there, so once it went out we contacted whoever was replacing Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and they had our power back in two hours,” Little said. “I think I actually made it out pretty lucky during the storm.”

Others did not share his sentiment, though. Jess Mendez and Jessica Yacono struggled to dig their cars out on campus after the storm.

“I used my hands and my feet,” Mendez said. She had parked her car by Suffolk Hall under a tree. “I did that on purpose hoping that the tree would take most of the snow.”

Yacono was parked along Colonial Drive and had to wait until it started raining to attempt to move her car out. It took her 15 minutes to drive her car over the snow that had mounted behind it. She also commented that the information about where to park during a storm was not helpful to her because she did not see it in time.

“I was in my lounge and there were these sheets that said where to park during a snow storm, but I did not see it until Sunday night,” Yacono said. She wished that Hofstra had sent an e-mail before the storm and could have saved her a lot of time and trouble.

Allison Carmody, junior, was impressed with the way Hofstra handled plowing out cars and saw that it came with a cost.

“Hofstra handled taking care of the roads well, but at the expense of plowing in all the cars so people who had never owned shovels before had to dig their cars out,” Carmody said.

Sentiments about Hofstra’s handling of the storm varied. While Little said that they handled clearing the residential parking lots well, he struggled on the academic side. Students living in the residential halls were concerned with the sidewalks and walkways following the storm.

“It was harder for me to walk from my building to my car than to clear my car off because of the ice,” Mendez said.

“A lot of the sidewalks are very icy and I’ve almost slipped a couple times,” Chlosta said. “But I think that that is just something that happens with weather.”