Calendar conclusion
After months of worrying, Student Association polls and Thresher editorials, the Faculty Senate has narrowed down academic calendar proposals to two similar plans (see story, page 1). Given its long-term stability and sheer simplicity — making commencement a week later and winter break a week longer — we support the proposal wholeheartedly and encourage the Senate to vote for Plan A, which maintains the two-day spring recess, at its next meeting.
There has been some faculty opposition to the spring recess because the resulting incomplete week does not give lab classes enough time to finish full experiments. One proposal to fix this problem is to allow these courses to simply hold classes over the break — something that could be announced in the course description so student would know in advance. While we worry about discrepancies between courses, some courses already have mandatory meetings over weekends. And if this compromise will save the spring recess for most students, then it certainly seems like a wise decision. We merely hope that this habit of required meetings during breaks becomes a rare move, used only when absolutely necessary.
After all, students have expressed passionate support for spring recess in the SA online forum. Furthermore, eliminating this break would probably require expanding and moving the week-long spring break — a reorganization that would require too much effort to be completed before Rice’s deadline for a new calendar plan. Therefore, any discussion of the spring recess should be held off.
Over the past year, we have proposed a calendar plan that would extend winter break by gaining days via eliminating the requirement that students’ graduation status be confirmed before commencement (“Calendar conversation,” Oct. 12). We made this proposal under the assumption that Rice’s growing student body would make this requirement too great a burden on the Registrar’s Office and would eventually be eliminated no matter what the calendar. Furthermore, the proposal was intended as a stopgap measure until the typically static commencement date could be moved (“Longer winter break, that’s all we need,” Nov. 9). We are very glad to see that the calendar could be jumped to this end goal without having to undergo any unnecessary changes, as long as the Registrar’s Office can handle the growing student body in the shorter amount of time allotted under the new calendar.
On another note, we would like to remind readers that ideas expressed in editorials are intended to reflect the opinion of the Thresher editorial staff, not overall student opinion, as was implied in the academic calendar proposal.
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