Fall break remains work in progress, not a reality before 2011

Fall break won’t become a reality next year.

However, IU Student Association executives said they’re working with administrators and faculty to develop a proposal that would give students both Labor Day off and a fall break in 2011, if accepted this year.

Senior Abby Kaericher is the chief of platform for the fall break initiative. Kaericher said her team is working to develop a proposal to be put before the Bloomington Faculty Council, the body of faculty who will ultimately provide approval for the break.

“They’re worried about symmetry between the fall semester and having the fall semester be so much shorter than the spring semester,” Kaericher said.

IUSA executive director of public relations and junior Liz Billman said implementing a fall break would be great “just because so many have tried to do it before.”

In fact, the Kirkwood ticket has already made fall break one of its platform initiatives for 2010. If the current administration accomplishes their goal, Billman said she is unsure how the campaign will proceed.

“I think it would make the election really. I don’t know what they would do in the election,”  Billman said.

Executives said if the proposal is not passed this year, they hope to be able to pass all they’ve accomplished on to the next administration.

“All the work that everyone in our administration has put in, we wouldn’t want that to go to waste and so everyone like Abby is making sure that their work is picked up next year and built upon,” said senior Jack McCarthy, vice president of administration.

Since the calendar is already set for next year, anything accomplished this year would not go into effect until at least 2011.

McCarthy said the IUSA administration is working to show student support for the proposal before it goes before the BFC.

A link on the IUSA Web site will be created to allow students to enter their username as a show of support for the proposal, McCarthy said.

However, the online document will not be a petition, but a less aggressive way for IUSA to demonstrate student support for the proposal.

Kaericher said she is heavily invested in the initiative because of family ties. Her brother worked on a similar initiative during his time at IU as vice president for IUSA Congress.

“They had a proposal for it in 2007, and the Dean had a review, and a lot of research was done then and then it got shut down, so we’re kind of picking up the pieces from there.” she said.

McCarthy said the new structure of the current administration has helped them accomplish more than past administrations. While others might have had the president work on accomplishing several campaign promises during his term, this structure devotes a single person to the task.

However, the fact remains that fall break was one of the “Five B’s” on the campaign platform of the Btown ticket and current administration. McCarthy said that students should understand that these initiatives take time, and he feels his ticket explained itself well during the campaign.

“I think that when students asked about it we were clear, and I think we were pretty knowledgeable because we had met with a lot of administrators before we got elected so we understood how fall break was going to work,” McCarthy said.

Kaericher said one proposed plan would require the fall semester to start on a Wednesday three days earlier than the normal date. Fall break would then be worked in as a long weekend beginning on a Wednesday, similar to Thanksgiving break.

Additionally, IUSA is working to give students the Labor Day holiday. Kaericher described this as one of the “baby steps” her team is trying to accomplish. The current proposal would allow for both holidays, but Kaericher said Labor Day is at the top of her list since it is already a national holiday.

McCarthy said despite the fact that no proposal has actually been accepted, the IUSA administration has made leaps since the beginning of the year when even mentioning fall break was taboo.

“When we first started talking about it, it almost was like a lost battle,” Kaericher said.