Is it a snow day or isn’t it? Danbury, Connecticut, mayor teases students on Twitter
It’s been an important part of Danbury students’ winter semester: checking Twitter to discover if their classes have been cancelled due to yet another snow storm pummelling the area.
[tweet 1]
Danbury mayor Mark Boughton knows this, and has a little too much fun taunting the students with his exasperating tweets, rarely giving them the straight answer they’re looking for.
Sometimes he announces the cancellation of classes at fictional schools:
[tweet 2]
[tweet 3]
[tweet 4]
[tweet 5]
[tweet 6]
Sometimes he “forgets” to complete his sentences:
[tweet 7]
[tweet 8]
[tweet 9]
And sometimes he just makes fun of the no-snow-day disappointment:
[tweet 10]
[tweet 11]
Students, all in on the joke, aren’t afraid to whine back:
[tweet 12]
[tweet 13]
[tweet 14]
[tweet 15]
While Boughton doesn’t actually have any say in whether classes are cancelled or not — that’s the job of Sal Pascarella, the superintendent of schools — Boughton’s Twitter account is often the first to announce the news.
Boughton told CNN that this snow-day tradition has been going on for several years now:
"The kids take it tongue in cheek. They understand, because it’s sort of a tradition around here," he said. “We go back and forth. But it’s all in good fun.”
And while his tweets aren’t always helpful, he rarely gets a real complaint about them.
"I have a very serious policy side…but I like to have a good chuckle," he said. “That’s who I am. In the end, I think it (social media) is about being yourself.”