Faculty consider fall break

As students struggle through the halfway point of what seems to be a never-ending semester, a break is something wanted by all.\nHere at IU, however, the concept of fall break is a mere thought among students and staff, as it doesn't exist here -- at least yet.\nThe Bloomingon Faculty Council is weighing the pros and cons of instituting fall break. The proposal for extending Thanksgiving break, which was made two years ago, is still being discussed by the council.\nR. Gerald Pugh, professor and associate dean of continuing studies, said scheduling the academic year is all about trade-offs and making each semester a full 16 weeks.\n"The calendar has to be constructed as a totality of trade-offs, all of which have to equal 52 weeks," he said. "The goal is to keep the quality and quantity of the academic calendar the same, if not more than it has always been."\nPugh, chair of the scheduling and calendar committee for the Faculty Council, said the main goal of the committee and council is to keep academics as the number one priority in the academic year.\n"Because of increasing tuition costs to cover salaries and other expenses, you don't want to decrease the academic time in the calendar because that is exactly what students are paying for," he said.\nThe solution to these issues came with a proposal two years ago made by the committee to the Bloomington Faculty Council. The proposal set up a way for the calendar to allow a full 16 weeks of school while still creating a fall break.\nTo achieve this solution and to have no "broken weeks," which would hinder the science department's use of lab scheduling days, the committee proposed to incorporate the two days before Thanksgiving as a "fall break," which would in turn make Thanksgiving an entire week.\nBecause many students skip out Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving and faculty find them as lost days, the committee thought it would be best to mark them as fall break. \n"There's merit in the idea of a fall break, but Thanksgiving is where students, by virtue of their actions to have a full week, have placed it," he said.\nTo have that week off, Pugh said, the academic calendar must add one more week to the semester while letting Labor Day be off to create the full 16 weeks.\n"With this proposal, you can get Labor Day off, you can get a fall break a little later, and you can have a full week off for Thanksgiving by starting one week earlier," he said.\nWith this proposal, the first semester would be symmetrical to the second semester, with Labor Day equaling Martin Luther King Day, and Thanksgiving equaling Spring Break.\nAlthough the proposal still conflicts with some, Pugh said it is the most positive way to incorporate the wishes to have a fall break, a longer Thanksgiving, and Labor Day off while keeping academics as the highest priority.\n"When you put a proposal like that in place and put it in the public, you look for discussion and opinions on whether it will work for students and faculty or not," Pugh said. "So far there has been very limited discussion."\nWhile Pugh said that every year around October students speak out and wish they had a fall break, it dies down.\nAlthough many students think that adding a week to the beginning of school would make the semester longer than other schools, they are wrong.\n"Purdue has a fall break, but look at when they start," Pugh said.\nWith Purdue's start date set at Aug. 20 and its fall break two days long, IU would have an almost identical calendar year to Purdue, therefore not having a longer year than other schools.\nSo while the proposal is with the BFC and the effects would create a balanced semester with a full 16 weeks like it should be, Pugh said that it has been the most unexplored option by students.\n"No one has come and written a proposal that they would like to start a week earlier," he said.\n"Students and faculty need to know that this is a trade off, and that it will only work if there is a trade off so that we have a full, 52-week calendar year."\nDespite starting school earlier, some students would still like a break.\n"It bothers me that other schools get a fall break while we don't, but in the end I think we all have the same amount of school as anyone else," sophomore Areta Ljubicic said. "At least it would give us a break though."\n-- Contact staff writer Rachel Ward at raward@indiana.edu.