Faculty council postpones voting on calendar changes

A trio of calendar changes will not be voted on this year by the Bloomington Faculty Council. At Tuesday's BFC meeting, the committee tabled the proposal, or postponed action on it until next fall. \nThe proposal would have given students and faculty a day-off on Labor Day and extended Thanksgiving break for the entire week. In exchange, classes would have started a week earlier in August. \nThe issue of laboratory days and the combination of all three calendar provisions into one bill proved thorny enough to postpone the measure. The council agreed to take the provision up again next fall after revisiting the proposal's concerns. \nFor most faculty, a Labor Day holiday was appetizing. But those in opposition said a Monday vacation at the start of the semester would disrupt laboratory scheduling, which depends on week long blocks. \n"A broken week eliminates a week of lab work and has significant impact on the academic mission of all departments," BFC president Bob Eno said. \nSome council members were also turned off by the inclusion of the provision to shorten the summer by one week. The summer months are valuable for faculty research. \n"The contentious issue is having a week of classes before the end of August," member Malcolm McFarlane said. "This will heavily affect all research departments."\nThe proposal has good merit but deserves more careful consideration before a deciding vote can be cast, he said.\nThe council will address the faculty concerns and present a more palatable proposal come fall. \n"Yes, I want Labor Day off," Ellen Andersen said, "but there needs to be a provision on what to do with the labs because that issue was not well dealt with."\nOther faculty members thought Tuesday's decision was a spoiled opportunity to finally give IU a respite on Labor Day. \n"My feeling was that this has come up over and over again, and tabling it didn't resolve anything," Elin Jacob said.\nJacob supported the proposal to establish a symmetry of days between the fall and spring semesters. Currently, the first semester has two fewer class days than the second semester. \nSteven Watt affirmed that the council was not giving up on a Labor Day holiday. \n"The message (Labor Day classes) sends is negative," he said. "We should have the resolve to come back and revisit this issue"