The university canceled classes Thursday on account of snow that fell the previous Friday, Saturday and part of Sunday, administrators announced in a recorded phone message that went out at 5:45 a.m. and was heard by nobody.

"We like to be sure," said a voice on the recording. "We have looked at the snow from every angle, and we are now confident that it is, in fact, snow."

By the time the announcement was made, the snow had been plowed, shoveled, sanded, thrown at people, built into a fort on the quad and partly melted. Students who had walked to their 8 a.m. classes through the snow on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were not compensated.

Asked whether the university would cancel classes for this week's snow, which began falling Sunday night, officials said they would "know more in March."

After three years of work, construction crews on Friday unveiled a large new hole behind the science building, replacing the smaller hole that had been there since 1996.

The new hole is deeper, wider and more muddy than the old hole, and is surrounded by a fence, a second fence, and a sign promising "A NEW BUILDING FOR A NEW CENTURY." Crews worked through the winter to make the hole as large as it is today, and could be seen most mornings standing at the edge of it, looking in.

Students who used to cut through the area to get to the chemistry labs must now walk around the hole, a trip that adds about eleven minutes and has been named "the Long Way" in the campus directory.

The new building is expected to open in "Fall 2000," according to the sign. Seniors who were freshmen when the old hole was dug say the sign used to say "Fall 1998," and before that, "Soon."

The incoming freshman class moved into the residence halls this week, bringing with them, by the Gnat's count, every object they have ever owned.

Items carried up the stairs of one dorm alone on Saturday included eleven televisions, fourteen mini-refrigerators, a futon that did not fit through any door, a full drum kit, a lava lamp in every color known to science, and a box marked "MISC (DON'T OPEN)" that four people had to carry.

The rooms, which measure about the size of a parking space, were full by noon. By two o'clock several new residents had discovered that their roommates had also brought a television, a refrigerator and a futon.

Parents were seen leaving in empty minivans, some of them honking. Sophomores who moved in last year with "only the essentials" watched from the lounge and said nothing, because they had brought a futon too.