With pristine, clear blue skies and radiating sunlight, Elon University successfully avoided the comeback of last year’s ice storm this Fellows Weekend. But Mother Nature still had a few tricks up her sleeve: a winter storm overwhelmed much of Eastern United States, affecting many of the 600 visiting families.
Nationwide, 4,892 flights were canceled and another 4,000 were delayed Thursday — a whopping delay of 20 percent of all flights in the U.S. While some visiting families escaped Thursday’s horrendous weather, others were caught in the middle.
Some prospective fellows turned to the Class of 2019 Facebook page to arrange dinner plans with their peers, while others united in their shared concerns of how the inclement weather conditions have thwarted their travel plans.
J.T. Carroll, a prospective Honors or College Fellow, was one of those students. After returning home from school Thursday, he was informed his flight to Greensboro was canceled.
“I left school early in anticipation,” he said. “My parents spent hours on hold looking to reschedule the flights, but nothing was available until Friday.”
The next day, his family tried again. After arriving at the airport at 5 a.m., they were informed of another cancellation. Following a series of more delays and cancellations, his family finally caught a 7:30 a.m. flight from Boston to New York and arrived in Greensboro nine hours later. Despite his travel blunders, Carroll said the ordeal was definitely worth it.
“The opportunity to compete with hundreds of similar students, especially out of the multiple hundreds of applications, in itself made the trip worth it,” he said.
Other students caught in the storm had to seek alternative means of travel. Many students were forced to abandon their flight plans and drive through 8 to 10 inches of snow to reach North Carolina. Tess Harkin, a prospective Communications Fellow, was originally scheduled to fly out of New York Friday at 6:30 a.m. but decided to make the 10-hour drive from Connecticut because of the endless cancellations.
Other students bore greater distances. The winter storm gave an especially hard-hitting homecoming to Hannah Schmidt, a prospective Leadership Fellow traveling from her home in Frankfurt, Germany, where she currently lives. Landing in John F. Kennedy Airport at 11:30 a.m. after her ten-hour flight, Schmidt and her father had no choice but to drive all the way down to Greensboro, with only one stop in Washington D.C.
“She was jet-lagged as well but wasn’t complaining,” her father, Tim Schmidt said. “She was just excited to be able to make it to campus and get a feel for what Elon is all about.”
Aside from some travel delays, the Fellows Weekend went smoothly for many families. The event welcomes hundreds of families every year to compete in a selective process for seats into one of Elon’s six fellows programs: honors, college, business, leadership, teaching and communications. The weekend’s activities included interviews, group meetings, information sessions and written exams.
Kevin and Marilyn James, the parents of prospective Leadership Fellow Faith James, said they were especially impressed by the warm environment created by faculty, staff and students, as well as President Lambert’s charisma.
“Elon was already a high possibility, but coming here has just made us so much more confident,” Kevin James said. “I’m ready to go to Elon myself.”