Written by Will Lewis

The Faculty Senate will meet today in the UC Magnolia Room to vote on the fate of fall break.

The Academic Scheduling and Procedures Committee (ASPC) will propose the combining of the fall and Thanksgiving holidays into one, week-long break.

The elimination of the two day break in October would allow students an entire week for Thanksgiving.

“I think it’s a pretty good idea,” Rick O’Neal, senior criminal justice major, said. “Because you just have the three days and then you go back to school and then you have the second break. Just consolidate it. I feel in the long run it will just save time for everybody, and you’ll be more productive.”

Two to three day holidays also provide some students with an incentive to extend their holiday unofficially.

Dr. Marc Pufong, political science department head and a member of ASPC, said that some students will leave the Friday before the break and come back the weekend following. This disrupts the continuity of classes and puts students behind during finals week.

But some students believe that the length of time between breaks would stress them out if the two holidays were combined.

“I really don’t think they should be together because you have two months of school, straight, with no breaks, and then you have a full week… but it is just nice to have a break every few weeks,” Victoria Graham, sophomore pre-nursing major, said.

Dr. Pufong believes that the break should be held closer to where the current fall break stands, and eliminate the current Thanksgiving holiday. A proposition that he acknowledges probably won’t gain much headwind. But Dr. Pufong believes the break falls too close to finals week.

The combination of the two breaks in November will allow students whose families live out of state to travel home.

Dr. Pufong said that he was shocked that some students were forced to stay in Valdosta during the short breaks because of their distance from their families.

“The separate breaks make it harder to spend time with family and friends, whenever you do get to go home, because you are rushed,” Blake Covington, senior creative writing major, said.

Also on the agenda is the movement of the first day of classes spring semester to January 13. According to the Faculty Senate Agenda this would make VSU more competitive with other schools.