Students at Waterloo Region’s public and Catholic schools, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College all got the day off on Thursday.

That left the University of Waterloo as – by far – the biggest school in the region to keep its doors open as a band of freezing rain moved through.

But for the school’s students, that was part for the course.

“I was not surprised,” Shayan Arman said of when he learned that he would be one of the relatively few people attending classes in the region on Thursday.

“All I saw was all these Twitter things that they had highlighted about every other school being closed, and of course not ours.”

Indeed, a quick scan of Twitter messages sent to the university reveals a wide array of frustration and disappointment.

In many ways, the day seemed to be an echo of February 2, 2015 – when, once again, Waterloo was the only school in the area to open its doors.

Nick Manning, the school’s director of media relations, told CTV News that although staying open was “one of the most contentious (decisions) that the university can make,” administrators felt it prudent based on Grand River Transit buses running and other factors.

“The campus is clear of ice, and the roads are clear,” he said.

“We’re doing our very best to make sure that we keep campus safe, and I think we’ve done a good job of that today.”

Waterloo’s architecture school in Cambridge was closed for the day. That, Manning said, was because of the number of professors who commute to that campus from Toronto.