Students being removed from the Student Center on Monday told the Daily Kent Stater they were puzzled that the building was closing early. University spokesman Eric Mansfield said it closed because of the campus’ closing Monday after 3 p.m., but Student Center operations manager Robert Lierenz said in his three years at Kent State, the Hub and Student Center generally had not previously shut down in cases of a university closure.

We won’t deny that students should have listened to the announcement being made over the speaker about the building closing, and it definitely should not have been necessary to call a Kent State police officer to remove students who did not want to leave. Students need to respond appropriately when authority figures tell them to leave, no matter what the students’ own opinions are.

However, it does seem unnecessary to remove students who were eating or waiting in line. What harm would there have been in giving students another 10 minutes to buy or eat their food? In Monday’s freezing cold temperatures, it does not seem right to make students leave the warmth of the Hub for the frigid outdoors, especially with the little advance warning they received.

We also have to wonder why the Hub would close in the event of a campus closing when the university said Dining Services employees are “essential,” meaning they were required to report even in the event of a closing. It is not hard to understand why some on-campus dining locations would have reduced hours in the face of a campus closing and extremely cold temperatures, but why not better promote the hours these places will be open?

We think the campus officials and students both could have used more common sense during Monday’s Student Center closing, and we hope in the future that more students will be cooperative when asked to clear out of a building and more campus officials will understand why they are unwilling to leave.