“The 5 p.m. time allowed for normal shift starts for physical plant, police, residential and hospitality services, power plant, university operators and other core backbone operations that have been operating with skeleton crews,” Youatt said.

Originally, the university was set to resume operations at noon on Tuesday, but a call was made that morning to postpone opening until 5 p.m. The call was made abruptly because of the ongoing weather situation.

“Administration is doing what they constantly do in weather situations like this — reassessing the conditions,” university spokesman Jason Cody said. “The decision (was) made to postpone operations until 5 p.m due to wind chill temperatures remaining as low as they were for longer than they were forecasted to.”

Although most operations on campus were set to resume at 5 p.m., some operations still were not functioning at normal capacity.

Certain services, such as the MSU Federal Credit Union and the MSU Dairy store, stayed closed all day Tuesday, said Tami Kuhn, the interim director of the MSU Union.

The Spartan Spirit Shop, Biggby Coffee and Sparty’s also closed earlier than normal. The MSU Union stayed open until its normal closing time, 2 a.m.

In addition to the MSU Union services affected by the inclement weather, sporting events on campus had to make special arrangements as well.

MSU police offered a free shuttle service from a variety of places on campus to Breslin Center for basketball fans attending the game against Ohio State.

University spokesman Kent Cassella told The State News although athletic director Mark Hollis is among other administrators in charge of making the decision to cancel classes, Hollis prioritized the well-being of students over MSU’s 9 p.m. basketball game against Ohio State.

Students were not allowed to line up for the game until 6:30 p.m, according to an email sent out by the Association of Future Alumni, although the time was changed to 6 p.m. on site. In addition to this change, the raffle for students to win lower bowl Izzone seats was canceled.

Kevin Pauga, the director of basketball operations, said he first learned about the class delay via email on Tuesday morning and did not consider the game the primary factor in the decision.

Tip-off at Breslin Center was met with the arctic air that has afflicted East Lansing the last few days.

According to National Weather Service in Grand Rapids meteorologist Brian Meade, game time temperatures were supposed to be 18 degrees below zero, later warming up slightly to 10 degrees below zero.

Meade said he doesn’t expect the wind chill to be above zero until sometime this afternoon.

“When the wind calms down a little bit (the temperature) will get a little bit better,” he said. “But it will still be very cold.”

With the forecast in mind, some professors chose to cancel night classes.

Assistant professor Maral Zakharia opted to cancel her CAS 111 class slated for 6:30 p.m. because of her concerns with the dropping temperature endangering students on their way home from the class.

Even with the lost day, Zakharia does not think it will affect the amount of material covered in class.

“My cancellation will not have a negative impact because we can manage to cover what we were planning on doing today during the course of the semester,” Zakharia said.

But some students, including economics freshman David Wehrly, were saved by the bell. Wehrly said he planned on attending his class at 12:40 p.m. until the university postponed operations until 5.

“The only class I would have had to attend is an undergraduate studies class, and it sounds really interesting, so I was actually looking forward to going,” Wehrly said. “But hey, I’m not one to complain about another day off.”

Luckily for some students who had their travel plans canceled by freezing temperatures, winds and snow, classes did not resume until later on Tuesday. Heavy snow made driving to campus difficult for out-of-towners, and several flights into Lansing were canceled.