Finding the answer to calendar woes

Last week, the faculty (or at least the 37 members of the Yale College Calendar Commitee) made the unsurprising decision to nix a proposal that would cancel a day of instruction to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) Day. Hopefully, a better solution will be found by Thurs., May 10, when the faculty reconvene, but in order for this to happen, the very political problems that led such a terrible proposal to come before the faculty in the first place will have to be solved.

HYURA CHOI/YH

The first problem is the calendar itself. Yale has become too attached to the duration of its summer vacation. The break is much longer than at similar schools, and Calendar Committee Chair John Meeske cannot even explain why this is the case. He thinks it may have come about when Yale offered a full term of classes in the summer, but this no longer is the case. Although faculty oppose shortening the summer because they enjoy having Labor Day free, it is clear that lengthening the academic year is the only way to accommodate the requisite breaks.

Initial moves have already been made toward this. After shortening this year's winter break to avoid starting on MLK Day, the faculty has conceded to shortening summer vacation in 2007, when the same situation would otherwise occur. But if summer were shorter every year, it would be possible to add a break in late October when students' mental health, confronted by midterms, is at the breaking point.

Shortening the summer is a step toward introducing flexibility in the schedule, but there is room for even more out-of-the-box thinking. What if, for example, there were five single-day holidays distributed throughout each semester, just to break up the monotony and give students a chance to catch up on work? If they were held on different days each time, no classes would be unfairly impacted, and students would likely remain on campus, making the days good times for getting work done or holding student events. What if shopping period had a special schedule where the first lecture was given multiple times, allowing students real time to shop? Since the calendar is up for revision each year, it is surprising that there is not more experimentation to make the calendar friendlier to stressed students.

But while stress is universal, MLK Day is not. The pressure to cancel classes on this day is another impediment to a better calendar. Official holidays tend not to be convenient, but while there is no chance of ignoring Thanksgiving, Yale can at least avoid canonizing MLK Day. Any Saturday or Sunday could just as easily be declared a day to talk about civil rights. Furthermore, a neutral day would be more equitable to those other minority groups that MLK Day does not include, or includes in a subordinate way.

Advocates of the holiday might better expend effort on getting Yale to recruit more minorities or even doing the recruiting themselves. On MLK Day, some people in America may be actively honoring the late civil rights leader, but many more people will just be enjoying the long weekend. At least at Yale, classes could be teaching students about the world King helped create, as part of a system that he helped open to everyone. This is the highest honor we can bestow upon him.

There is no perfect calendar. In fact, Meeske notes that at Princeton, a recent survey found that none of a set of proposed calendars received support from faculty or students. This is because different days are important to different people. Students, staff, and faculty have the liberty to take off whatever days they feel necessary, but the official academic calendar should maintain a pace appropriate for the school and its academics. It is not intended as an instrument of political expression and should not be used as one. In trying to make people as happy as possible, it is important to not let a group of vocal liberals guilt Yale into forgetting its purpose. 

Kushal Dave, PC '02, is a senior editor of the Herald.

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