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The Rice Thresher
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by Olivia Allison Thresher editorial staff Faculty members will not discuss reinstating the 2003 two-day spring recess that they voted to remove April 2 at this year's final general faculty meeting despite a Student Association resolution calling for the faculty to reexamine its decision. The resolution, approved April 9, also requested "Rice University to establish formal lines of communication with the Student Association president in the academic calendar decision-making process." Speaker of the Faculty Bob Patten met with Graduate Student Association President Miles Scotcher, a graduate student in biochemistry and cell biology, and SA Presidents Jamie Lisagor and Gavin Parks Monday to discuss further recommendations. These include creating a new committee to evaluate calendar changes and reinstating dead week. Patten said he will suggest that the faculty create a new committee to deal with calendar approvals in the future. Patten, the faculty sponsor for the GSA, said he thought one problem with the current procedure was the lack of graduate student representation on the University Standing Committee on Undergraduate Curriculum, which approved the calendar changes before they were presented at the April 3 general faculty meeting. Although three undergraduate slots currently exist on the committee, no graduate students serve. "There really was no effort not to include students in the discussion, it was sent to the committee where that was in place," Patten, an English professor, said. "What isn't in place was the forum for graduate students to state their opinions. That's probably a wrinkle we will have to address." An additional suggestion from Lisagor and Parks, Hanszen College juniors, included reinstating dead week, the time between the last day of classes and beginning of finals. This semester, the last day of classes is April 27, and final exams for non-graduating students begin May 2. However, exams can be self-scheduled as soon as April 28. Lisagor said she did not know whether the dead time between classes and exams should be enforced - banning tests and meetings between the last day of classes and the first day of exams - or if the amount of time should be extended. "Right now what we have is not a real dead week because you can start scheduling exams immediately," she said. "We don't know if we want to change the way we use the time that already exists or make the time longer. "We need to make it at least a time when you can't schedule meetings and no one is taking tests so that it's just a time for relaxing and preparing." Patten said he agreed some students would not have enough time to prepare projects and papers at the end of the semester without the two-day recess, and dead week might help compensate for this. "We would at least have to have dead week because you just can't get together for group projects during an academic week," he said. "The faculty needs to think about the consequence of its actions in these other terms." Registrar Jerry Montag said he thought the faculty should reconsider the decision before finalizing it. "I agree with the resolution in that I think the faculty should reexamine the termination of spring recess and receive student input before making any final decisions," Montag said. Baker College sophomore Patrick Sullivan said he thought the two-day recess was pointless. "We already get a full week for spring break anyway, and to me two days doesn't make a difference anyway since it's so close to the end of the semester," Sullivan said. However, Wiess College freshman Christine Liang said the two-day break can be more relaxing than the week-long spring break. "Spring break is a whole week and when students have a four-day weekend, they're less inclined to do something like go skiing," Liang said. "So the two-day break is more like a real break." Brown College freshman Valerie Lewis agreed spring recess was important. "It's necessary for the sanity of students," Lewis said. Patten said the faculty had planned to review the calendar changes after it saw how the removal of the break affected the campus. "This is voted for and we're going to try it out," he said. "We are going to reexamine it at the end of the trial period." Patten said he thought both parts of the SA resolution -reexamining the decision and establishing formal lines of communication with the SA president- were already in place in the calendar approval process. "We are not only responsive to both parts of the resolution but also both of those things were intended to be done," he said. President Malcolm Gillis said students' opinions would be taken into account when the faculty reconsiders the removal of the break, but emphasized undergraduate committee members' absence from the CUC meeting when the calendar changes were discussed. "I don't think this is something that is written in stone for years beyond 2003," Gillis said. "I am certain that the faculty will want to hear from the student body when they begin looking at the calendar next year, just as they were ready to hear this year, but unfortunately no students made it to the meeting." The three undergraduates appointed to this year's CUC last year were Brian Stoler (Hanszen '01), Wiess senior Sarah Pitre and Baker junior Kevin Askew, but none attended the meeting where the committee approved the calendar. Stoler lost his membership when he graduated in January and became a computer science graduate student. Sid Richardson College senior Esther Sung replaced Askew when he went abroad, but Sung said she never received any of the committee's e-mails. CUC Chair John Zammito added her to the committee's list Wednesday. Pitre said she had a scheduling conflict with the CUC meeting but understood why the change was made. However, Gillis pointed out that academic calendars are approved two years in advance, so changes made during spring 2003 in response to feedback from students would not take effect until the 2004-'05 academic year. Lisagor said students should be a bigger part of the calendar approval process. "We need to find ways in the future to not let the academic calendar go through without student input," she said. Sullivan said students aren't the best source for decisions on the academic calendar. "I don't know if students always make the best choices when it comes to breaks," he said. Zammito, a history professor, said student opinion on the academic calendar was important, but the decision was the faculty's to make. "It is my opinion that students certainly have the right to express their opinion, but at this university ... calendar decisions are a faculty matter," Zammito said. "That does not mean that we are not interested in students' opinion, but calendar approval is generally not a student decision."
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