The 10,000 plus students attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks face a struggle that students attending colleges and universities in the Lower 48 may have difficulty understanding: the cold. As the mercury plummeted to 40-below recently what effect did the cold have on the daily routine of a UAF student?

Within the warm confines of the Wood Center, many red-faced, shivering student bodies, fresh from their battle with the elements, were willing to answer.

Skyler Lovelace, a 21-year-old engineering major, explained that the drastic weather can have a drastic effect on his and all single male students' social lives. He said as soon as the temperature drops, "all the good looking girls go into hiding."

 On top of this tragedy Lovelace complained that the weather deprives him of precious minutes of sleep. "I have to get up earlier to start my car, if it starts," he said.

Women in hiding and early morning car warming are problems that the students of Arizona State University would never have to worry about.

Nineteen-year-old music major April Jaillet finds the cold weather cutting into her eating habits.

"I don't got to breakfast because it's too cold to walk down the hill," Jaillet said.

The Gamecocks of South Carolina make it to the cafeteria in shorts and tank tops.

For Cody Rogers, a 21-year-old who lives in a cabin with no running water, the cold's reach extends as far as her bodily functions.

"I woke up at 4 a.m. and had to pee really bad, but since it was so cold I didn't want to go to the outhouse."

 Students at Texas A&M don't traverse frozen tundra in order to go to the bathroom. At New Mexico State University students are not sitting in the commons discussing how they should have hooked up their outhouse's remote controlled electric seat warmer.

Some students have decided to defy the oppression of a Fairbanks cold snap. Jon Flora, a 23-year-old history major is one of them.

"I bike to school everyday," he said, the cold "makes me put on more layers."

Occasionally, when the weather in the California drops from great to good, students at San Diego State put on a windbreaker, the layers that Flora puts on are slightly thicker.

The extreme cold steals early morning sleeping time from some students, others have begun functioning like a cold-blooded reptile. Eighteen-year-old business major Joe Johnson said, "my usage of toper has increased." Johnson explained, "toper is the act of sleeping because you are cold."

This is a problem that bikini clad beach bunnies at the University of Miami wouldn't understand.

Some seeking their academic enlightment at UAF say that the cold affects the learning process.

"I've been really tired and I skip class more," said Lizzie Nanto. The 22-year-old psychology major added that the cold cuts down on her activity. "After I work here [The Pub] I go home."

Students at the University of Hawaii skip class for 15-foot swells on the North Shore, not to hibernate at home.

With effects on the UAF social scene, bodily functions and class attendance the cold's brutality knows no bounds. Cold affects everyone in Fairbanks and puts the students of UAF in a class of their own.

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