Give Us a Break
Illustration by Breanna Newburn
Article by Jayden Forsyth
NEWBERG, Ore. – George Fox University (GFU) has a lot in common with other universities: comparable semester lengths, food services and a typical resident hall and apartment setup. Where GFU differs is in its holiday and break schedule.
GFU has a sizable list of holidays that it still holds classes on. Some notable ones are Labor Day and Veterans’ Day. Most colleges, whether public or private, choose to cancel classes over these days. GFU also hosts classes on other federal holidays such as Presidents’ Day and Columbus/Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but these holidays are not given specific time off by GFU.
However, GFU does have mid-semester breaks during both Fall and Spring semesters that fall around these two holidays. So, while students get two day-long breaks, the federal holidays are still gone unobserved.
Holidays aren’t the only vacation times that GFU is atypical about. Instead of having a week off for Thanksgiving break, GFU only gives two days off, specifically Thanksgiving itself and Black Friday.
Different colleges and universities across the United States give anywhere from two to five days off for Thanksgiving. The University of Oregon and Oregon State University similar to GFU only allot two days off for Thanksgiving.
However, other Christian colleges such as Linfield University, Corban University and Vanguard University respectively have five days, three days, and three days off for Thanksgiving. The lack of travel accommodations at GFU has students making tough decisions about whether or not they should attend their classes during Thanksgiving week.
“[Thanksgiving] is a holiday that should be observed more at George Fox,” said Campbell Anderson, a sophomore GFU student who had to travel home early for Thanksgiving.
Because of difficult or long travel times, it isn’t unusual for students to spend the Thanksgiving holiday alone to avoid missing classes or the quick travel turnaround.
Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English department Jessica Hughes explains the complexity: “While having holidays is great, the reality is that the extra days out of class have to be accounted for somewhere. To take Labor Day and Veterans Day off, we’d likely have to start school a week earlier, which is also not ideal.”
Despite this complexity, Hughes sees a way that holiday breaks could be compartmentalized, solving the problem of travel during the busy parts of the semester.
“I’d love for us to start earlier and finish before Thanksgiving,” said Hughes. “That way students could go home, get holiday jobs…and we wouldn’t have the strange week between Thanksgiving and finals.”
However, Hughes does recognize that this could conflict with institutional functions such as student housing and dining. No matter how class and vacation times are structured and plotted out, “students and faculty alike are always exhausted by the time the end [of semester] comes,” said Hughes.
Travel, exhaustion, time constraints and many other nuances make the issue of having more or less observed holidays a complex issue. While it is unlikely that GFU will change its observed holidays or its vacation break scheduling soon, there will always be inconvenience when trying to optimize school breaks for students.
