Written by: Joe Adgie

The Academic Scheduling Committee has approved a four-day exam schedule and kept Dead Day in place but voted down an SGA-suggested return of Fall Break.
That was announced at Monday night’s SGA meeting by Sen. Nick Buford, who sat in on the Academic Scheduling Committee meeting with Comptroller Erica Adams.
The decisions were met with disapproval from the legislative body and were questioned by some senators.
“How can they do that?” Sen. Edgar James asked.
“We tried,” Buford said in response. “We went off votes that we had that were in favor of the fall break and the five-day exam schedule, but it was voted down.”
These votes were cast in November, when over 3,000 students took part in an SGA survey that indicated that the student body was in favor of bringing Fall Break back.
“I guess I’m afraid that that proves the point of most students,” James said. “When we talked to them while we were doing the polling, they were like, ‘They’re not going to listen to us,’ so how do we proceed from there?”
Buford explained the committee’s reasoning for voting down Fall Break.
“They complained about the days, but we told them that the days would work out, even though students were saying that they didn’t mind coming to school three days earlier if they could have the fall break and the Thanksgiving break.”
Adams also explained more of the reasoning behind this vote.
“The thing that they were trying to prove to us is that students are going to take a week off if we do the two-day fall break,” Adams said. “They don’t like that, and they’re tired of it. That’s why we’ve got the week off at—- Thanksgiving.”
Dr. Michael Noll, parliamentarian of the Faculty Senate, sat in on the SGA meeting. He expressed some frustration at the politics of the move and the committee’s ignoring of his wife’s proposal for the scheduling that, according to him, would “provide a best-case scenario where we finally find a situation at VSU where we wouldn’t have to fight every … single year.”
“We would have a fall break and a Thanksgiving break and four days of finals,” Noll said. “You are killing so many birds with one stone. It’s unbelievable, but I do know who was acting behind the scenes. We can make a stink about this.”
Noll also explained that he was one of several members of the executive committee of the Faculty Senate that was frustrated with how this occurred.
In addition, according to Noll, some members of the committee were absent, and proxies were used in this voting “in a very smart fashion.”
“If you want something done, you have to be there,” Noll said. “But don’t give up on this just yet.”