As the recommendation from the Fall Term Break Task Force was announced at the Feb. 28 Senate meeting, a murmur passed through the crowd of attendees.
The Task Force announced that their recommendation was, “a two-day fall term break on the Thursday and Friday of the seventh week of classes, to be implemented for the 2018-19 academic year, if practicable.”
Graphic by Rachel Liu
This recommendation comes after the AMS lobbied for the alternate option, which would’ve pushed Orientation Week back a full week to allow for a four-day break, as 52.8 per cent of the student body voted for it on the AMS winter referendum.
The results of the university-wide survey of students on their preferred course of action ended roughly in a three-way split between all options. When asked to rank what was most important to them, 34.2 per cent of students said a Fall Term Break, 33.6 per cent chose a pre-exam study period, and 30.1 per cent claimed that Orientation Week activities were their top priority.
Implementing the new two-day Fall Term Break will require some re-working of the existing Orientation Week in place at Queen’s, since incoming first year students will now move in on the Saturday before Labour Day.
First year students will have residence orientation on move-in day, followed by faculty-specific orientation spanning from Sunday to Wednesday, and two days of classes on Thursday and Friday.
Residence orientation will resume for the Saturday and Sunday after Labour Day weekend, and a regular class schedule will begin Monday.
These changes to Orientation Week will allow for a two-day break during the Thursday and Friday before Thanksgiving weekend.
The Task Force claims that advantages of moving forward with this option will include leaving the existing pre-exam study days intact, keeping Orientation Week as a six day event despite splitting it up throughout the week, and ultimately result in a four-day break during a high-stress period in the term.
After a presentation that showed the Task Force’s decision-making process, certain points garnered questions and concerns from the other senators in attendance.
Concerns that were raised included the possibility of students not taking their first two days of classes seriously or even not attending at all, and the possibility of getting confused when being thrown back in to a full workload of classes after the possible light introduction on the previous Thursday and Friday.
After approximately half an hour of discussion Principal Woolf put the motion to a vote, having it pass with only a few opposed, including Senators Emily Townshend, Ciara Bracken-Roche and Brandon Jamieson.
The new Fall Term Break will be implemented for the 2018-19 academic year.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s)-in-Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be contacted, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to journal_editors@ams.queensu.ca.
