Even though Mississippi State University’s fall break and Thanksgiving break were combined this year, fall break will return to October next year and more flexibility will be added to the schedule in the future to avoid similar situations according to officials.
Jerry Gilbert, provost and executive vice president, said when MSU decided on the Thursday night football game, a committee composed of faculty, staff and student representatives agreed not to schedule classes on that day. The class day was rescheduled for the final Friday before exams, and fall break was moved to minimize the number of partial weeks in the semester. This was done to accommodate laboratory sections that meet multiple days in succession.
“There are major departments that have labs that are set up on Monday, and they go until Thursday—the same lab, the same lab setup. If you have a Thursday football game where you are not going to have labs that day or that night … now the Thursday is out of the setup. The choice that most departments make is not to have labs in a week where there is not a continuous setup,” he said.
Thomas Sellers, former Student Association president who served on the committee, said the decision to move fall break was a temporary fix.
Sellers and Gilbert said next year, fall break will occur as usual over two days in October and currently coincides with the week of a Thursday football game. The change this year was solely because of the limits on the number of partial weeks in the semester.
“I understand that fall break is important. I like fall break, and I think students like fall break. My recommendation at the end of this was I thought it was worth it to accommodate not having classes on Thursday and put fall break with Thanksgiving just to make the schedule work for this one semester,” Sellers said. “I basically just saw it as a short-term fix with my input … ideally if you can have fall break early in their semester, that works great, and that is how (MSU is) planning to do it in the future.”
Students have mixed opinions on the change made to fall break this year. Mariel Colman, senior civil engineering major, said she is upset not to have a break in October.
“I miss it. I think October gets pretty crazy with tests, so it is nice to have the long weekend to break it up or give you some breath in between all of that,” she said.
Matt Harlan, sophomore biological sciences major, said he is excited for the week-long break over Thanksgiving.
“I have a specific reason for liking the week off. That weekend is the Arkansas and Mississippi State game, and my brother happens to go the University of Arkansas, so I have a week off to go to that game and then hang out with him for a while. I’m a fan,” he said.
Harlan said, however, he would like to have fall break back again next year.
“I probably will not like it in the future because the next week is our exam week, and I will be studying pretty much the whole week. I will be with my family, and I will still have to be studying,” he said.
Gilbert said there were limited options for changing the schedule to accommodate the Thursday night game. Adjustments to the start and end days of the semester were not an option because of the scheduling conflicts students encountered last year when final exams were shifted to make up the snow day.
“We were faced with having to make some compromises because we had locked ourselves in with the beginning and the end (of the semester) and not much in between … so the idea was to take those two days and move them to the Thanksgiving week as the very late fall break. It turns out when we first had a fall break about seven or eight years ago, it was on that Monday and Tuesday. So it is not unprecedented,” he said.