While people in popular culture joke and kvetch about “first-world problems,” please allow me to add my complaint to the long and mostly trivial list: my belief that DU students should have more holidays off.
While it seems convenient that New Years Day and Labor Day are worked into the DU break schedule, it’s an oddity in our already quirky schedule that we’re not given a day off on President’s Day, Veteran’s Day or Columbus Day.
These holidays celebrate, respectively, the birth of two of our greatest and most admirable and influential national leaders, a day originally marking the end of World War I now used to honor and remember the memory of all American servicemen and women, living and fallen and finally, a day to commemorate Columbus and his discovery of the New World, regardless of the controversy surrounding him or his day. It’s a federal holiday and we should have the day free from classes.
Maybe my desire for more days off is a symptom of my ire for our truly bizarre schedule. We’re on summer break for four to five weeks longer than most other colleges, we’re off for a long anguishing winter break and we’re coerced to stay in school for five to six weeks longer into the glorious dog days of summer break.
I can’t be the only student absolutely dreading being cooped up in school during the sunny, warm, carefree days during May here in Colorado; we should be out road-tripping, spending time with old friends and dipping our toes into the refreshing waters of old-fashioned summertime instead of rotting away our days stuck in Sturm.
All my bitterness aside, it does make good sense that we’d be free from classes on national holidays meant to show honor and respect to the fallen and greatest among us. It’s odd that we have a day off class to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who, of course, is a towering and inspirational figure among us but deserves the same amount of respect and deference as leaders like Lincoln and Washington.
It’s odd that DU has singled out only Dr. King’s holiday to give us a break, but chooses not to recognize the importance of other holidays. Perhaps we should rise up from the grassroots student level and not go to class on holidays, like the ones mentioned above. It would send a message to professors and the school administration.
If that’s not your bag, we could arrange a 1950s/1960s style sit-in and instead of going to class on days we really should have off, all go and occupy the office of some official or an important, high-visibility location. This would lend real meaning and credence to Occupy DU and give us a few more days off – whether administrators like it or not.
