It is a hot and dry summer day in downtown Denver. I am at Denver Zoo working as a leader in the kids camp, a place where tired parents can pay for a week of time free of their children.
I had been working with the kindergarteners and had thought of a fantastic idea to beat the heat. We would give out leftover popsicles from the week before as a snack – in addition to the kids’ normal snack and lunch.
However, as we went down the line passing out the popsicles and reached the very last kid, we ran out of popsicles, not a single one left. The poor kid was so bummed but he didn’t throw a fit, just mumbled a melancholy “it’s okay”, and accepted some measly goldfish as a substitute.
This sad forgotten child is every student at Colorado Mesa University as they watch all their friends at other universities being given Labor Day off.
Now you may say, like sophomore Teague Reedy did, “I don’t mind [having school on Labor Day], if it means we still have the same amount of school.”
However, when compared to the collective school days of our fellow universities, we are in school for several days longer than most – 77 collective school days to be exact. In comparison, Western State has Labor Day off and a “fall break” day off, leaving them with 76 school days.
Fort Lewis doesn’t have Labor Day off or a fall break but their semester starts a week later and ends the same week as CMU, 73 school days. Even if you look at a larger school like CU Boulder, which has 75 collective school days, we are still in school more.
Having more class days means we are more academic, right? Nope. Even Harvard manages with only 73 collective days.
As your mother would tell you, simply because many other universities have Labor Day off does not mean we should. We still have fall break, which not many other universities have. Even though having one Friday off and calling it “fall break” is like putting a piece of lunch meat between two slices of bread and calling it a burger. It isn’t incorrect, and it is better than nothing, but it is so much worse than the average.
After losing a class day to “fall break”, CMU administration may argue that taking away a Monday from the academic calendar would force professors of courses taught on Monday, Wednesday, Friday to lose another valuable teaching day. This could mean that course material would have to be cut or overly condensed.
However, if professors and students at Harvard, CU and Western State can handle it then so can the Mavericks.
Despite professors constantly needing to rework their schedules each semester it is still unfair to remove an additional day from the Monday, Wednesday and Friday courses. Therefore, if we cannot remove a Monday from the academic calendar and we have an unsatisfying fall break, why not add a day to fall break? Why not remove Thursday and Friday for fall break?
This would still leave us with an above average number of consecutive class days, 76, a fact we could still use to demonstrate our emphasis on academia at CMU. Additionally, adding an extra day to fall break would allow students much more freedom to return home and visit family, since a four day weekend would at least allow an equal number of days to travel as to stay. Removing a Thursday for the break would evenly disperse the loss of class days over the Tuesday/Thursday and Monday/Wednesday/Friday courses.
CMU already has one of the highest numbers of class days compared to our fellow Colorado universities, so removing an additional day should not affect the ability to cover all course material. The addition of an extra day to fall break would greatly increase the ability of students and faculty to catch up on tasks and/or rest up on break.
Finally, by making the additional day a Thursday, it would have equal impact on course schedules, regardless of how frequent and on which days the classes meet. If administration can’t give us Labor Day off, then it should make Fall Break one day longer.
