Pitt petition to cancel classes nets nearly 10,000 signatures

Pity poor David Ankin.

At least he had an excuse for trying to avoid icy winds cutting through the University of Pittsburgh’s Oakland campus.

“I lost my hat yesterday and was too busy to buy a new one,” Ankin, a computer science major at Pitt, wrote on an online petition urging school officials to cancel classes.

The petition on Change.org picked up steam Tuesday night as the mercury dropped.

Taylor Tomlinson, a Pitt freshman who launched the petition from a dorm room, had no idea it would net nearly 10,000 signatures.

“I doubted it would get any more than 150 signatures,” Tomlinson said.

Pitt officials said it had nothing to do with the cancellation of classes on Wednesday. School officials said they plan to return to normal operations Thursday.

Deteriorating weather — not Ankin’s lost hat or the “it’s cold” comments that accompanied many signatures — was the determining factor in Chancellor Patrick Gallagher’s decision to cancel classes early Wednesday morning, Pitt spokesman Joe Miksch said.

Pitt last shuttered classrooms in February 2010 after 20 inches of snow fell on the city in a single night.

Other schools around the region that canceled some or all classes on Wednesday included Pitt Greensburg, Saint Vincent, Seton Hill, Carnegie Mellon, Chatham, Robert Morris, Slippery Rock, LaRoche, Westmoreland County Community College, Community College of Allegheny County and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Things were cozy in Western Pennsylvania on Wednesday compared to campuses in the Midwest, where the Polar Vortex hit hardest.

The Detroit Free Press reported that the University of Michigan canceled classes for only the third time in 40 years on Wednesday after 12,000 people signed an online petition calling for a shutdown in advance of the temperatures dropping to minus 11.

Ann Arbor looked like Florida compared to Muncie, Ind., where Ball State University canceled classes as the mercury plummeted to -10 degrees with a windchill of 41 below zero.

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@tribweb.com or via Twitter @deberdley_trib.