By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, News Correspondent

Some Northeastern students eagerly anticipate March 3, as it marks the first day of their spring break. Students who won’t be going away, though, will have to deal with restricted use of their Husky card March 3 – 5 due to system upgrades.

Freshman Matthew Da Costa, who will be on campus later into the week before he goes home to Jamaica, said he will be directly affected by the planned outage.

“I was completely unaware about it and I’d expect it to put a strain on my other sources of funding because I use my Husky Dollars to do a lot of my personal shopping,” he said.

Northeastern Director of Marketing and Communications Renata Nyul said administrators planned the downtime so it would be least disruptive for students.

“The upgrade will only impact a few vendor locations,” Nyul said. “We have been thoughtfully planning it for months and picked three days during spring break to make sure the upgrade causes the least amount of negative impact to our community.”

In a Feb. 2 email to students, the Office of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs said several services that utilize the Husky card system would be unavailable, including additions to meal plans, replacing Husky cards and adding funds to the cards. Students will also not be able to use their card for laundry, vending machines, off-campus dining vendors or the Northeastern bookstore, Rebecca’s Café and all dining halls will still accept the cards.

Building access, residence hall access, printers, gym and library access, athletic events, parking and student advantage will still work.

“This is a normal, routine system upgrade to strengthen the Husky card infrastructure and to continue to provide the very best service to our students, faculty and staff,” Nyul said.

“I think it’s a dumb thing to do,” middler communications studies major Christine Umeh said. “The dining hall closes much earlier on holidays. It’s not just an international thing either, but also students who can’t afford to go on spring break or also students who live across the country, who can’t afford to go home for spring break.”

Sophomore Deje Shawnavay Scott said the downtime would be an inconvenience.

“For people who live in Boston, like me, we like to go to Wendy’s and let the Husky dollars be deducted,” Scott said. “I feel it’s not worth the upgrade especially if you don’t have money and you just want to get a snack. Nobody wants to use a meal swipe on a little cookie.”

Freshman Danny Whalen said he was uncomfortable with the timing of the upgrade.

“This should be done over summer, it’s only a few more weeks away,” he said.

However Whalen didn’t shy away from his feelings of the upgrade as a whole.

“The Husky card works fine – fix NUwave,” Whalen said.