Editorial: Good grief!

The opening scene of “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” says it all. After convincing Charlie Brown that kicking a football is a Thanksgiving tradition, Lucy pulls away the pigskin at the last second, and poor Charlie ends up on his back. Standing over her prone friend, she questions him, “Isn’t it peculiar, Charlie Brown, how some traditions just slowly fade away?” Sadly, some don’t.

For a number of years, the Editorial Board has consistently taken the position that the University should change the academic calendar and eliminate classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This year is no exception. Although it is an admittedly intimidating and complicated process to change the University’s academic calendar, this shift of one day is almost unanimously endorsed by students and faculty alike and would take comparatively little work to implement. By adding a day onto the first week of classes, which now begins on a Thursday, the University could offset this dropped day, prevent the current travel headache and create better overall balance in the academic calendar.

The reasons for striking the Wednesday before Thanksgiving are clear. In terms of the actual travel process, even a morning class that ends early in the day can delay students significantly and subject them to the full brunt of delays, airport lines and traffic jams that inevitably arise on the worst day of the year to travel. If the unfortunate student has a late afternoon or 7:30 class, the logistics become markedly worse if not impossible. Appreciating these problems, professors frequently cancel or reschedule Wednesday precepts, seminars and lectures; however, this rescheduling normally occurs in late October or early November, by which point students face fewer travel options and must purchase expensive last-minute tickets. Students set on buying affordable tickets face the dilemma of guessing whether class will be canceled and either having to wait around or skip class if they’re wrong. Some students understandably decide to just skip their classes regardless of rescheduling, which is particularly problematic for courses where participation is central. Although it is ultimately the University’s responsibility to fix the calendar, professors should also recognize these issues and make clear in the syllabus at the beginning of the semester whether students will be expected to attend class on that Wednesday.

This change would also create greater balance in the calendar early in the semester. By beginning classes on Wednesday, all lecture classes could meet before the first full week of school and begin scheduling precepts, distributing work assignments and providing students information about book purchases. Such a change would also provide students more time and insight in deciding whether to add or drop a course.

Several of the candidates for USG have expressed a serious commitment to reforming this policy, and this Board hopes that the future leaders of student government will follow through on these campaign promises. Princeton is an institution that rightly values its traditions, but having class on the eve of Thanksgiving should not be one of them. Shifting that day to the first week of classes is a policy with clear benefits and no apparent drawbacks. Let’s not be like Charlie Brown; let’s not miss the ball again.