The University’s decision to suspend classes for three hours next Tuesday will allow more students to watch the swearing-in of the nation’s 44th president, but if it is cancelling some classes on that day, the University might as well cancel them all. In future inauguration years, the University should plan sufficiently far in advance to allow students to attend the inauguration.
Cancelling classes from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. does not provide nearly enough time for students to travel to Washington to experience the event in person. It will, however, let students watch on television without worrying about missing class. For students who were debating whether to skip class anyway, this arrangement is a relief. Many professors likely would have cancelled class themselves, but those who did not would have been asking their students to miss out on a historic event. Suspending classes avoids the confusion that would have occurred otherwise and affords all students a chance to witness democracy in action.
Though it is a step in the right direction, the adjusted schedule fails to benefit from one of the University’s particular assets: its proximity to the nation’s capital. It is no coincidence that a university just down the road from the District of Columbia has a large number of students majoring in politics. Its geographical location is one of the University’s draws, and Inauguration Day is an opportunity to exploit it. Not every school in the country can offer its students a chance to observe government in person. It is a waste for the University not to do so by offering a day off for Inauguration Day.
This semester’s unusual schedule — starting on a Tuesday (but with Monday’s class schedule), followed by a three-day weekend — means that Inauguration Day is the first time Tuesday-only classes will meet. This made cancelling classes for Inauguration Day impractical. But in the future, schedules could be planned around inauguration events. If classes had started only a day earlier, cancelling all classes on Tuesday would not have been a problem, since Tuesday classes could have met during the first week of the semester.
Planning in advance will also eliminate the accusations of partisanship that have accompanied the University’s action. We do not believe the administration intended to endorse a political view with its decision. For whatever reason — President-elect Barack Obama’s historic candidacy and the massive student participation in his election both likely contributed — there are clearly far more students interested in watching this inauguration than there have been in past years. Acknowledging this fact is not a partisan act.
It is easy to see, however, why those people who are convinced academia is a mechanism of liberal indoctrination would interpret the suspension of classes as an endorsement of Obama’s presidency. Establishing a day off for Inauguration Day as a permanent University policy would render such accusations unfounded.
Though we wish the University had planned years in advance to allow students to attend the inauguration, it is now too late for it to cancel all classes. The administration can still encourage professors to forgive students’ absences from class if they choose to go to Washington, and it should ask that the professors make their intention to do so clear as soon as possible.
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