The Bomb Yo...

Wow.  It's been a crazy few days here in Indianapolis.  Like much of the country, we have been subjected to this wild winter storm.  For us in Indianapolis, it meant about 1.5 inches of ice and a campus wide and state wide emergency.  When you work in Housing and Residence Life, this means you are on stage and should be ready to perform.  This, my friends, was our Superbowl.

For the past year our campus has been thinking about emergencies and really preparing for handling one.  Our staff has been trained, drilled, and prepared for a variety of scenarios.  We have "command centers" and "incident commanders" and "communication plans" for just about any scenario.  You hope you don't have to use your plans, but on a week like this one I was so glad we had one. While we all deal with winter weather, we were facing the possibility of losing power and heat for our residents spread through three different communities.  We do not have dining halls on campus, so we were facing the possibility of running out of food as well.  We were all hoping that we would avoid that, but as the storm approached it looked like a strong possibility.  I ended up staying in one of the apartments on campus and eventually Sarah and Myles joined me.  Our RA, Dillon, even made us a door decoration and welcome sign (see photo).

The storm hit, and hit hard as ever.  To put in in perspective, the campus has been closed for three days strait.  I don't believe the campus has been closed three days in the last 20 years for weather.  Anyway, very quickly our plan was put into effect.  I attended the campus emergency meetings, then I contacted our Res Life Supervisory Team and met with them, and then they met with their staff.  Really, part two and three is where the magic happened.  Our student staff--both graduate and  undergraduate--went door to door to check on students to make sure they had food, they planned events so that students had something to do while stuck in the buildings, and they just did a great job making sure that our students on campus knew we were here.  We had pizza parties, dance nights, pancake breakfasts, Zumba, a Grilled Cheese Night, and Hot Chocolate and movies.  The Student Staff came through in a HUGE way and it was just so amazing to watch (see pictures).  They even created a "Situation Room," which absolutely cracked me up.  We are in day four here of the emergency response with today being the last one as campus reopens at 5p today.  This week has been one of those weeks where it was constant monitoring to make sure we were good in the present, but also good for the future in case we did lose all power and utilities.  While the worst case scenario did not occur (thank goodness), the staff implemented our plan to perfection.  Yesterday, I was walking to our 4Runner getting ready to go home for the first time since Monday and I overheard students from Ball Hall saying, "wow, we have a dance tonight and more pizza and wings...I just cannot believe they are doing all this for us."  I could not be any happier with our staff effort and it was nice to hear our students recognize that we were taking care of them.  I'm so proud of them because when the big moment came, they just did it.  In the words of Randy Jackson, they were "the bomb, yo!"   em

I would be completely and utterly remiss if I did not mentioned our Service and Maintenance Staff in Housing.  While 99% of employees did not report to work on our campus because of the weather, our SM staff had to be here to help clean off the entry ways, take care of the trash, and clean up the ice and salt in the lobby areas.  They worked tirelessly in the bitter cold removing up to 1.5 inches of ice.  It was hard, thankless work and they just did it too.  No complaining.  They just did what they do.  Tony Dungy talks a lot in his book Quiet Strength about doing the common things in an uncommon way and our SM staff did that.  They were outstanding and you just have to love them for that.  To quote Randy Jackson again, they were "the bomb yo!"

As I sit her on this Thursday morning I am humbled by the efforts of our staff.  At the end of the day in emergency type situations you are judged by how you perform no matter what the conditions.  Our staff was simply outstanding and that will keep me smiling for days.  Happy running to you (as you may imagine I've not been able to given the ice)...

Pancakes at Park Place & Pizzas at Ball Hall