Spring Break: On the way out?

Great Debates
1

AKA “Spring Break: Time to eradicate it?”

This is sort of a poll, but I did not put it in IMHO due to its most likely controversial nature.

Question one: If you’re in college now, or you went at some point, is/was there a spring break?

Question two: Do you know if the college in question, or any others you’re aware of, will retain spring break or if they have done away with it?

My answers: I went to one quite some time ago; I teach on that same campus now; there is still a spring break, but it may be eliminated as of Fall 2006 semester for reasons to be discussed below.

Reasons to retain spring break:
It’s a tradition. It’s been around for quite some time.
It’s fun!
It’s a chance for families to get away together if the kiddos are in K-12 and get this break.
It gives the faculty a break as well as the students.

Reasons to dump spring break:

  1. It began as Easter vacation and was oriented towards that religious observance, but now it has moved towards a more secular time off. Also, it can occur any time in March or April, from what I’ve seen over the years, though I don’t recall if it still really coincides with Easter celebrations.

  2. Why should there be a spring break when there is no fall break?

  3. It stretches out the spring semester longer than it needs to be. This is a concern for campuses moving towards alternative calendars–i.e., 16-week semesters instead of 18.

    3a. A 16-week regular semester would allow for all of the following: more of a break in the summer for those who take off for that time; and a bit of a break between the end of spring and beginning of summer intersessions, as well as more of a break between end of summer and beginning of fall semester.
    3b. There would also be the possibility of a winter intersession, which some campuses have while others do not, due to the extra time made available.

  4. People should be concerned with what’s best for students and faculty academically instead of with family vacations, which can be arranged at other times during the year.

  5. A number of students do not return to classes after the break is over.
    I never thought I’d say this, but it seems to me that there are more reasons to dump it than keep it.

Your thoughts?

2

I’m in college now. My school has both a fall and spring break. The fall break though is a long weekend. Spring break is a whole week. As far as I know, there are no plans to get rid of either one.
-Lil

3

Lesse, we get a two day break here in October and a three-day break for Thanksgiving. Add in the extra, unscheduled day in the fall and that’s six days off. So we have a 16 week semester plus finals. In the spring, we get a five-day break, generally about the end of March, then the Friday off before Easter. At least, I think it’s a Friday, though we might get Easter Monday instead. So, we have a 32 week year, seperated by about a month, and then roughly four more months in the summer.

4

Here, we get off for all the state holidays: Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving. Christmas occurs during the break between semesters, of course, as does New Year’s Day. Another day off in January for Dr. MLK, then a long four days for the presidents’ birthdays, then the spring break in March or April.

I should also mention that this campus runs classes on Saturdays and Sundays, too, so sometimes those days are “shaded” in the calendar when it’s color coded for holidays.

5

My undergraduate days were from 1975 - 1980. Very few people did spring break then, at least at my school. We all had too much work to do, so…

hmmmph!

6

I’m a freshman this year and I’m pretty sure it’s in late March.

AFAIK, it’s not being debated.

I don’t see this as a reason for anything.

Actually, my college has a fall break. That’s what the administration calls the three-day weekend that has just ended. :rolleyes:

I would prefer some sort of break in the spring to a longer summer, although if I had a summer internship or job I would probably opt for the latter. It all depends on your situation.

My college has a winter intersession.

Which goes back to this:

I don’t know what percentage of students that is, but that’s really a personal choice.

7

I have been in school off and on longer than most people I would guess, and have been teaching now for a bit. I have to say that by mid spring everyone is tired of each other. The students are picking fights with themselves and with teachers.

This last year spring break wasn’t till April and the school was getting dangerous towards the end of that stretch. There were daily fights in the falls, I heard of at least a couple that broke out in classrooms, and the police were in pretty regularly. There were more students expelled in that couple weeks than at any other time in the year. After break everyone had time to cool off everyone settled down and we got the year done.

Several economies in the United States are based on tourism. Most states have at least one tourist town for something. In many cases those sectors of the economy have huge pull with legislators. I can not see that that kind of thing could pass in many places without lots of polititians needing to seek reemployment. It isn’t just the Florida thing that gets an income boost with spring break. I know that family resort communities here have higher hotel room prices during spring break, so they must do good business then.

I see no accademic advantages for getting rid of spring break. I see no economic advantages for losing it. The only real advantages I see are that some families have a hard time finding child care for that time.

8

those fights were in the halls.

Also, those kids who wouldn’t come back after spring break weren’t coming to class anyway. I’m not sure how eradicating spring break changes that.

9

UF has a 16 week semester, and they still have Spring Break. It is after the first 8 weeks of the semester are over, usually during the first week of March. Thus your point #3 is moot, unless you count the Spring Break week and the finals week as part of the calendar, bringing the total number of weeks to 18. But if you’re counting only classweeks as part of the calendar, then UF is an example of a school with 16 classweeks which still retains the Spring Break.

And why not? In the fall, many schools have Labor Day, 2 days for Thanksgiving, and again one or two days for “Homecoming/Fall Break” (UF has homecoming, LSU, my current school, has Fall Break). That adds up to roughly a week of classes.

During the spring, what do we have? Well, other than a holiday in January, not much. UF doesn’t celebrate many holidays, and without the Spring Break, the spring semester would only have one day off.

10

In the above, I’m referring to the custom of travelling to some distant, sunny location for the purpose of partying. Technically, we did have a break between winter and spring quarters. But I never heard of anybody “celebrating” it the way you do today.

11

Oh, as another anecdote:

APS used to have spring break during Holy Week. This, of course, meant that the break would depend on the placement of Easter and we all know what a mess that is to remember how to calculate (first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox, right?) Anyway, my senior year of high school, Easter was the 15th of April. We were done with our finals something like the first week of May, had a week off, and formally graduated something like the third week of May. So basically, that break was incredibly stupidly placed from our perspective. I think APS has finally stopped timing it with Holy Week.

12

SoP: My undergraduate days were from 1975 - 1980. Very few people did spring break then, at least at my school. […] In the above, I’m referring to the custom of travelling to some distant, sunny location for the purpose of partying. Technically, we did have a break between winter and spring quarters. But I never heard of anybody “celebrating” it the way you do today.

That sounds right to me. I went to college '81–'85, and it seems to me that the concept of going to Florida or somewhere over the break was just beginning to get popular then. Certainly it was nothing like the accepted ritual it is now.

So this aspect of the “tradition” of spring break is probably less than 25 years old. (I’d guess that the original tradition had more to do with letting students go home to celebrate Easter.)

Now I’m wondering: how did the “beach party” aspect of spring break start, back in the late '70s or early '80s? Was it just a spontaneously spreading idea on the part of students themselves, or did some marketing genius in Miami come up with the idea?

13

I’m wondering how it started as well. Guess I’ll have to go do some research.

14

I’m qualified for this one on a couple different levels.

First, I think the OP’s premise is flawed because it assumes all schools are on the semester system and the spring break messes with the academic year in several ways. I went to a school on a quarter system. Each quarter was 10 weeks with an 11th week thrown in for finals. There was, at a minimum, one week (i.e., Spring Break) in between quarters. There were summer sessions = 10 weeks. Fall Q. started after Labor Day and ended Thanksgiving = 10 weeks. Winter Q. started the first week of January and went through about mid-March - 10 weeks. Spring started (surprise!) right after Spring Break and ended first week of June = 10 weeks. Rinse. Repeat.

Therefore, it’s the perfect punctuation for schools on the quarter system. When I went to school (1986-1991), everyone pretty much went to Florida and shortly after I graduated, the destinations started to be in the Carribean and Mexico… probably to where there’s no or more relaxed drinking ages/laws.

Now… as a Floridian who has endured countless Spring Breaks as a grown up… I have a very different perspective.

On one hand, Spring Break is a source of much phat cash in the cities that still allow Spring Break. Ft. Lauderdale (aka Ft. Liquordale) sent letters to schools nationwide in the early 90’s to try to discourage kids from going there. So they went to Daytona. When Daytona decided they like Bike Week better than SB, the destination moved to Panama City, where the beat goes on, presumably. Regardless where most of the kids go, all of the state is full of drunk college students during March and most of April. We get a lot of money, from the drinking fines, gas and beer sold, speeding tickets, hotel rooms, you betcha. And all that, coupled with The Mouse etc. means I don’t have to pay state income taxes. Rock n roll – I’m all for spring break!

On the other hand, the cities where spring breakers go must spend millions to clean up and repair, add to police, fire and emt staff during those months, and placate the non-spring break tourists who had the unfortunate luck to have accidentally planned their vacation during spring break. The kids trash the place, moreso than the bikers in Daytona, and the heiresses in Miami. I’ve had the misfortune to pop into a bar for happy hour, forgetting it’s spring break. It sucks and I have to drink at home in the spring.

Now, I live in a college town, so this place happens to empty out during spring break. Unfortunately the state legislators are still in town, so traffic doesn’t ease up much until they all go home for the summer. Bottom line, for me: As long as it’s not in my back yard, party your little hearts out. I did it; it was fun; don’t get yourself killed. You’ve seen the beach. Now go home.

:smiley: