Survey says Fall Break popular

Despite recent faculty efforts to reform the academic calendar, a USG survey found that undergraduates do not want to see major changes to the current schedule, USG officers said at last night's Senate meeting.

USG president Rob Biederman '08 said in an interview that the survey found "two overwhelming percentages": Students want the University to retain Fall Break as well as the current extended reading period schedule.

Academics chair Sarah Breslow '08 said that over 1,400 students responded to the survey but she declined to release precise statistics. Breslow is also a photography editor for The Daily Princetonian.

"The survey's results are generally valid," Biederman explained, "but we would be concerned about releasing actual numbers because of the unscientific nature of the survey."

He said the results on other questions, such as the addition of a 13th teaching week to the semester and offering a full week off at Thanksgiving "were not conclusive enough" because "there were questions about the wording on the questions and about voluntary response bias."

Biederman encouraged the Senate to consider ways to make Fall Break more effective. "We want to brainstorm about things we can do ourselves or encourage our administration to do over Fall Break," he said.

Potential ideas included setting up civic engagement, academic and political trips, and creating seminars or a set of "mini-classes" about more lighthearted subjects than those normally taught in University classrooms.

"We also noticed that a tiny percentage of people used Fall Break to campaign for political candidates, which was the original purpose of Fall Break," Biederman said.

Civic engagement

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On the heels of last week's appointment of Jacob Candelaria '09 as civic engagement chair, the Senate voted in favor of an amendment to create the position. Constitutional amendments require the approval of two-thirds of the Senate at two consecutive meetings, so the amendment will most likely be approved at the first USG meeting after spring break.

"Civic engagement is a goal that is within the scope of our responsibility," Biederman said. Creating the civic engagement chair was one part of the USG's plan to increase its involvement in civic engagement on campus.

"There has been a lot of demand for increasing civic engagement efforts on campus," USG vice president Josh Weinstein '09 said. "Both Rob and [Class of 2010 president] Connor Diemand-Yauman have made civic engagement a part of their plan."

The proposed amendment creates the civic engagement position independent of the campus and community affairs (CCA) committee.

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"Earlier in this semester, we drafted five-point goals for the USG for civic engagement, and none of those five things fell under the purview of the CCA," CCA chair Cindy Hong '09 said. "To show that the USG is interested in promoting civic engagement, we thought it would be best to have a new position."

Candelaria discussed plans for his work as civic engagement chair, calling for the USG to "translate dialogue into action." He proposed improvements upon the Pace Center's service database and the cooperation between civic engagement and service student groups, to offer publicity opportunities for existing groups and events, and to host civic engagement symposiums.