THANKSGIVING Break is over, and students have returned to Grounds to attend a final week and a half of classes and to prepare for their final exams -- the last hurdle remaining between them and Winter Break. Although most everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable break, its length was not only unfamiliar, but probably unnecessary.
Thanksgiving Break lasted a full week this year, with many students clearing out after the Virginia Tech football game or even earlier. In contrast, last year's break began on Wednesday of Thanksgiving week, the same day that most other Virginia schools, including William & Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University and James Madison University, began their breaks this year. Starting break on Wednesday still gives all the students who are leaving Charlottesville plenty of time to get home for the holiday.
The week-long break has no beneficial aspect to it except extra days which are probably spent unproductively by most students anyway. So why the extra length? Marcia Childress, the previous chair of the Faculty Senate, said in a phone interview that the main rationale behind the decision was to create a schedule like that of "peer institutions," and to make travel easier for students who live far away. But as has been established, most of the University's neighbors begin break on Wednesday, and students with lengthy journeys can always make special arrangements.
While there may not be many good reasons to have such a long break, there are plenty of good reasons not to. For one, when students return, many have assignments due, and some of these are group assignments. When break is shorter, these students have more time to work on these assignments before leaving town, which is helpful for all assignments but especially for group work.
Students are also faced with final exams within a short time of returning to Grounds -- for some, the tests might only be days away. Unfortunately, they have been away from school for a while and have gotten out of that mode where they do their best work. Of course, there's no perfect remedy for this short of having the federal government move the date of Thanksgiving, but making the break longer only exacerbates the problem. A shorter interruption in their studies would probably improve most students' focus for the last bit of class and for their finals.
A longer break certainly isn't welcome news for students who for one reason or another cannot leave Grounds. These students were left in a veritable ghost town starting Saturday night after the game and lasting through the following Sunday. They enjoyed spotty access to facilities like the libraries and Slaughter Gym, and to on-Grounds dining, which for all intents and purposes shut down on Saturday evening after the Tech game and didn't return until the next Sunday. Those who weren't lucky enough to be invited to the home of a faculty member or of a friend who lives closer to Charlottesville were most likely not giving thanks.
The solution is simple: The start of break should be moved back to Wednesday again. There's hardly anything to do for students to do at home in the first few days of the longer break anyway, with family members not getting off of work or school until Wednesday and friends from other schools on a similar timetable. And there's no need for such an extensive break when Winter Break, weighing in at about a month, comes so soon after Thanksgiving. There are other places those vacation days could be used -- like on the tag end of the fall reading holiday, which is the only holiday on the current calendar between the start of class and Thanksgiving. Making that holiday longer would make it feasible for more students to return home (even many who lived in Virginia didn't go back over the reading day), which might be a good idea considering the problems with food and water that happened on Grounds during that break. Making the reading day a longer holiday would give students a good chance to catch up on the work that piles up early in the semester as well.
At the very least, the schedule-setting process needs to incorporate more input from all parts of the University. The faculty wasn't heavily involved in the decision to lengthen Thanksgiving or to start class earlier, and neither were students. The recent e-mail from the Calendar Committee promised to get input from both groups in the future -- hopefully, this promise will be fulfilled.
The other facet of the break that obviously needs improvement is services. While nobody's suggesting that University employees be made to work on Thanksgiving Day or the day after, if the University doesn't require that all students leave town, as it does over Winter Break, then better provisions need to be made for those who remain. Staffing considerations are obviously a problem, but there has to be a better solution than leaving students who must stay to forage an empty Grounds. They deserve a happy holiday like everyone else.
Matt Waring's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mwaring@cavalierdaily.com.
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