Employees shovel snow off of Union Lane Garage on Jan. 25, 2026. (Jonathan Peter Belling/The Diamondback)
Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
When the University of Maryland sent messages that campus would be closed for a whole week, I felt happy to stay at home and wait out the winter storm. That happiness turned into shock as those routine alerts became warnings about steam outages, icy and untreated roads, and damage to a recently built dining hall. These failures suggest a lack of warning and preparation…