A Faculty Senate task force conducted a faculty-wide survey regarding the possibility of making the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a holiday in future years and instead holding an additional day of classes, most likely on Labor Day.In order to hear the opinions of other faculty members, the survey conducted in the last week of October asked how the faculty would feel about holding class on Labor Day. The results of the survey were presented at the Nov. 6 faculty meeting and showed that the faculty was generally not willing to make that trade, as 54.7 percent said no, while 29.5 percent said yes and 15.7 percent had no preference.

The task force has been exploring several alternatives to holding class on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving since its creation on Aug. 28 at the first senate meeting of the year. Some of these alternatives include starting the semester a day earlier, holding class on Labor Day, pushing back the final exam schedule by a day or having the day off on some years but not on others depending how early finals fall and the schedule of the Jewish holidays.

"None of those [options] is easy," said Prof. Judith Herzfeld (CHEM), a member of the task force committee.

"We put [the idea of] teaching on Labor Day out there due to the fact that it could be done relatively simply. It's kind of odd to have a three-day weekend right after you've had just one day of class on Thursday and one day of class on Friday," Herzfeld explained. "On the other hand, Labor Day is a historically important day."

"On the survey there was a very high response rate from faculty, which indicates their interest in the issue, and what's even more impressive was almost half of them actually wrote comments instead of just clicking the right buttons. So I think there's a lot of sentiment out there about this," Herzfeld explained.

Herzfeld told the Justice that it seemed as though the faculty thought there were several better alternatives to teaching on Labor Day. However, out of these alternatives, it has still been difficult to find one that could work.

Herzfeld explained why the other options would be more difficult to implement.

Starting the semester a day earlier means that the University would have to either shorten orientation or postpone it, Herzfeld explained. "We've reviewed [shortening orientation] with the people who organize it, and we can't see any good way to shorten it," she said, "[Starting the semester a day early] means you push back move-in, which means you push back dorm prep, which means you push back the summer schools, and that gets to be complicated," she added.

In addition, Herzfeld also felt that the idea of changing the final exam schedule so that it starts later is not viable because it would delay winter vacation, especially during years all the Jewish holidays fall on weekdays. Herzfeld explained that this did not seem like a good option as it cuts too close to travel time for the holidays.

"Folks at the University sometime ago realized that some years they could [give us the day off] but [they] wanted it to be the same from year to year. That's not obvious as to why that should be, but that's something we have to get to colleagues about," Herzfeld said.

Prof. Sabine von Mering (GRALL), also a member of the task force committee, said that the day before Thanksgiving is essentially a "lost day" for faculty that do hold classes because most of the class is not in attendance.

"Those of us who are holding classes cannot really proceed with our material because if half the class is not there then we have to repeat it again the following week when everybody's back," von Mering said.

Von Mering said it's important that students have the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off because, "[on that day] the majority of classes are cancelled, so students are getting a mixed message.