Malta woke up on Monday morning to a heavy storm which had been raging all night. Inevitably, the downpour created havoc, with the ensuing traffic, flooding and debris resulting in utter chaos on our roads, as always happens when these types of storms hit our islands. As people started turning to the Internet and other media for information, they were immediately greeted with advice and warnings by the Civil Protection Department for them to stay at home. However, for some people, because of the nature of their job, staying at home is not an option. In fact, many employees spent the first few hours of yesterday morning debating whether or not to risk driving to work, particularly as many have vivid memories of similar storms in previous years which resulted in very frightening incidents for drivers and pedestrians alike.
Another part of the population which is left in a quandary whenever Malta is hit by a thunderstorm is students.
Where young children are concerned it is relatively straightforward as their parents can easily take the decision not to send them to school, but when it comes to students at Sixth Form, MCAST, Upper Secondary and University, the decision whether to attend a lecture has its consequences.
Early Monday morning, students were frantically asking each other on Facebook whether lectures had been cancelled, since missing a lecture means that they are penalised. Granted, some enterprising students took the initiative and contacted their lecturer themselves, and there were some lecturers who were thoughtful and considerate enough to inform their students by SMS that the lecture was cancelled.
But with such a large student population, it would probably make more sense if the various tertiary institutions made it a point to communicate this kind of information to the media to keep everyone informed. It does not require much effort to release a statement via email to all the radio, online news portals and TV stations, particularly to the breakfast shows which are avidly followed from 7am onwards. One must here also point out that several broadcasters did a sterling job yesterday in keeping viewers and listeners informed of what was happening and which roads to avoid.
Despite this vital information being broadcast on radio and TV programmes, however, the increased reliance on social networks cannot be overlooked, especially when it comes to the younger generation. Since Facebook is the first place most students (and even adults) turn to for information, the University and the other colleges should create their own page where they post regular updates, communicating with their students in real time. One must bear in mind that most students travel by bus from all over the island, and can get easily stranded on days such as yesterday with back to back snarling traffic lined up for kilometres on end. If they had known what was happening vis-à-vis lectures, they would have been able to make an informed decision.
As it turned out, many of those who did manage to make their way to University for an early lecture arrived to find a nearly deserted campus because, of course, many of the lecturers were just as stuck in the floods and traffic as their students.