The University announced yesterday that Fall Break Day, Oct. 12, would be cancelled for the 2009-2010 academic year due to an error in the planning of the academic calendar.
The administration belatedly realized that it had not accounted for Labor Day, which falls on a Monday, the same day of the week as Fall Break, in planning the academic calendar. As a recipient of federal funding, the University may not have class on Labor Day.
"A faculty member looking ahead to preparing a syllabus for his course for next fall realized that with no classes on Labor Day and with no classes on the Monday of Fall Break, he had one fewer class meeting time than he had expected. We were asked by the department if this was intentional and realized that, indeed, it was an oversight. This realization came a little over one month ago," Paula Burger, Hopkins vice provost, wrote in an e-mail.
In the e-mail, Burger outlined the various alternatives that were being considered: holding classes on Labor Day, holding classes on the Tuesday of reading period, extending the examination period to Saturday, December 20 and bringing forward the start date of classes.
A panel consisting of the deans of the School of Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering, department chairs and the Office of Student Life decided that holding classes on Fall Break Day was the best option.
Susan Boswell, dean of Student Life, spoke with SGA officers, and all agreed that canceling Fall Break Day was the best course of action.
"The academic deans consulted with us [the Office of Student Life], and we tried to come up with a fair solution, and this was the only one that really made sense," Boswell said. "The only other place that we could borrow a day from was reading period, but students have been clear that they feel reading period time should be preserved."
"Keeping a three-day reading period is definitely more important than a day off in October," Morgan McCauley, a sophomore economics major, said.
Burger explained why the school didn't compensate for the missed day by beginning school on Monday, August 31. First, the year was already starting a day early to accommodate the addition of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as an official day off from classes. This had caused freshman orientation to be shortened by a day, and starting earlier would have further taken away from freshman orientation.
In addition, Burger said that the school felt that given the rush that Housing and Dining services already experiences preparing its facilities between the end of summer conferences and the beginning of freshman orientation, there would not be enough time if the schedule for fall semester was moved up further.
Some students, however, expressed disappointment with the decision.
"I really look forward to fall break, and the idea of waiting until Thanksgiving for a day off is disappointing," Lauren Pollack, a sophomore Public Health major, said.
Another student, Jess Brandt, also a Public Health major, expressed surprise and disappointment that the University had so much trouble legitimizing a day off for students.
Burger noted that the school will still try to maintain the spirit of a Fall Break. The Office of Student Life has proposed moving Fall Fest to the weekend that would have been Fall Break in an effort to create a more festive mood, even without the three-day weekend.
Often the academic year begins after Labor Day, but because the holiday is particularly late this year, classes begin before Labor Day.
The University is required to follow guidelines issued by the Department of Education regarding the minimum number of hours of instruction necessary for a credit hour to be issued. Classes that met on Monday would have fallen short of the requirements if arrangements were not made for the classes to meet at some other time.
Administrators were also concerned about the ability of instructors to cover the full breadth of their material, particularly for the seminars that only meet on Mondays.
The problem of having Labor Day particularly late will be repeated for the 2010-2011 academic year, but Burger was hopeful that with a longer preparation time, the school would be able to accommodate Fall Break.
"While it's disappointing, I don't think the world is going to collapse if we don't have Fall Break this year. But this was a necessary step, and it's not intended to be a consistent policy," Burger said.
