On Feb. 21, during their last weekly general meeting before Spring Break, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) voted on and approved a statement on when Spring Break should be scheduled in the future.
The statement urges the University Senate and the Senate Academic Calendar ad-hoc committee to amend the 2025-2026 academic calendar so that Spring Break will fall after Week 8 or later. Mason Krause, President of USG, said “[o]ur main purpose with submitting this statement was to make it clear that this is what we believe to be the prevailing undergraduate student opinion, officially and in writing.”
Krause and the rest of USG came to this opinion, as said in their statement, after hearing directly from undergraduate students. USG conducted a survey in April, 2023 among undergraduate students regarding the placement of Spring Break. The survey revealed that, among the 1,152 responses, “91.8% indicated that they felt spring break was placed too early in the semester,” while “94.4% of respondents would place spring break after Week 8 or later in the semester.” The Senate Calendar ad-hoc committee then carried out their own survey later that same year in September and found similar results: 83 percent of student respondents indicating they would like Spring Break to be scheduled after Week 8 or later.
As said in the statement, undergraduate students have expressed several concerns as to why they would like Spring Break to be scheduled after Week 8. These concerns include “mental health, fear of burnout, unintentional shortening of the broomball season, and our Spring Break no longer aligning with other schools in the state.”
Right now, the provisional 2025-2026 academic calendar has Spring Break scheduled after Week 7 just as it is for this year, Spring 2024, and next year, Spring 2025. It is too late to alter the 2024-2025 academic calendar, but it is not too late for the 2025-2026 schedule. All that needs to happen is for the provisional calendar to be amended to move Spring Break to be after Week 8 instead of after Week 7, and then for the University Senate to vote to approve it.
