I’m exhausted. My friends are exhausted. Even my professors are exhausted. Yet, while March flies by, students and teachers alike are only ending up with one day off of school.
This isn’t new, as last semester we were only given a day off in order to prevent students from traveling due to the pandemic. This semester, however, Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) administration kept the one-day break despite having lifted travel restrictions on students.
Now, I don’t mean to come from a sense of entitlement. I’m not writing this article so that I can party in Florida until I’m arrested, but because burnout around campus has become more and more apparent.
In the same sense, I am not writing this expecting a change for this semester, as it’s likely impossible to change the school schedule halfway into the semester regardless. This is more of an explanation of possible alternatives if the pandemic continues into the next semester.
Although travel restrictions have been lifted, it’s understandable that CMU would still want to minimize the risk of student travel by shortening our mid-term break.
Campus COVID cases have been luckily very low, and it would be a waste if students were allowed to travel and party, only to come back to campus.
For this reason, it’s important to realize CMU can more effectively reduce student travel while sparing students and faculty burnout in alternative ways. This way, the entire school population has an opportunity to relax, regroup and take a mental health break.
Something CMU could do to reduce this problem would be providing more campus activities for students to participate in during the break. A majority of students traveling right now are arguably doing it much more out of boredom than anything else.
The Outdoor Program is a shining example of this, as they scheduled a trip for the three-day weekend we have instead of break. If the Outdoor Program were to do this during a regular week-long break, I can see a lot of students wanting to get involved.
School activities aren’t always received well by the student population, but with the warmer weather, I could see a lot of outdoor events being held in a COVID-friendly-fashion as well.
As well as this, I am nowhere near as knowledgeable with event planning as CMU’s Programming Activities Council (PAC) is, and I have confidence they would be able to put together a variety of events that would drive CMU’s student population to stick around.
While it may be idealistic and reliant on the rest of the CMU community in the same way much of our COVID protocols are, it is the best option in terms of reducing travel while preserving the mental health of CMU’s campus.
