By Hailey Heinz
For Northeastern students, New Year’s Day means more than resolutions and Auld Lang Syne. It means winter vacation is wrapping up and it’s time to head back to school, while students at many other schools enjoy a few more weeks of downtime. All that will change next year.
Last week the Faculty Senate approved an academic calendar for next year that will extend winter break by one week, shifting the spring and summer sessions with it. The senate also resolved to use this calendar as a model in years to come.
The new calendar calls for winter break to begin Dec. 17 and for spring classes to begin Jan. 9, giving students three full weeks off. Both the summer class sessions will begin and end one week later, and the break between Summer II and the beginning of fall classes will be one week shorter. The calendar will also shift Spring Break two weeks later.
Registrar Linda Allen, who designed the new schedule, said the change is in response to faculty who needed more time between semesters for grading, communicating with students and preparing for the next semester. She said there were also issues with commencement overlapping with Passover.
“We really just felt like there wasn’t enough time between semesters,” she said.
Allen said the only students who will notice the shorter break between Summer Session II and fall semester will be students taking Summer Session II classes, which she said numbered only about 1,600 students last summer.
The new schedule was discussed by the Academic Policy Committee of Faculty Senate, which is chaired by Assistant Professor of History Gerald Herman. Herman said there was no opposition to the calendar, and students who knew about the proposed changes reacted enthusiastically.
“Everybody felt coming back right after New Years was harder for everyone — students and teachers,” Herman said. “It also allows us to start classes on a Monday, which we weren’t able to do before.”
Throughout the semester, faculty members have expressed concern that the number of Monday holidays cut into class time, particularly graduate classes that only meet on Mondays. Classes have usually begun on a Wednesday because Jan. 1 is a holiday, but the new scheduling allows for a Monday start.
Herman said the new calendar should not affect the co-op schedule, since different co-op employers have different starting dates.
“When classes start has very little to do with when co-op starts,” Herman said. “Students who are on co-op start when they need to.”
Student Government Association President Bill Durkin expressed support for the idea, and said the new calendar will finally give Northeastern students a substantial winter break.
“I think by and large students are going to be happier with a longer winter break, because every other school has … up to a month plus,” he said.
Student reaction, though, is mixed. While some students look forward to a longer break, others said they would rather keep the schedule as is.
Students favoring the change pointed out they need more time to recover from the first semester and want more time to spend with friends at other schools, who generally get a longer break than Northeastern. Mona Tadayyon, a junior journalism major, said the change would be particularly beneficial to international students.
“I think it’s an amazing idea,” said Tadayyon, who is originally from Bahrain, a country off the coast of Saudi Arabia. “We start way too early … for the international students, it takes two days to travel each way, and then a lot of their break is gone. The American kids can go home on the weekend, but international students really rely on Christmas break to see their families.”
In contrast, some students said they would rather take their free time in the summer and enjoy some warm weather, rather than having an extra week of vacation in the middle of winter. Others pointed out that three weeks isn’t long enough to get a job, and that if the break is going to be extended, it should be extended to a month.
For John Beale, a freshman electrical engineering major, an extra week at home doesn’t sound like fun.
“After the fall semester, my parents really pissed me off and I’m glad to be back,” Beale said. “It’s kind of nice being back here before all the other schools are back in the city.”
Under the new schedule next year, commencement will be held May 6, Summer Session I will begin May 9 and Summer I finals will end June 27. Summer Session II will begin July 5, and final exams will end August 22. Spring break will now begin March 13.
