Committee may eliminate Stop Day
If passed, changes could not go into effect until the 2012 school year.
By Erin Sommer (Contact)
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
As University of Kansas students look forward to stop day, a group of KU faculty members and students is looking into whether the day should exist at all.
The calendar committee, a part of University Governance, is looking into whether to eliminate stop day from the University’s calendar.
Barbara Phipps, associate professor in the School of Education and chairwoman of the calendar committee, said that the issue had come up a lot during the past several years.
Mark Pacey, Manhattan graduate student and student senator, is another member of the committee. He said some faculty were concerned with the amount of binge drinking that happened among students the night before stop day.
On Sept. 18, the calendar committee voted via e-mail on whether to recommend to University Governance to eliminate the extra day.
Pacey said that Phipps e-mailed the committee on Nov. 30 to inform committee members that the vote was 6-5 in favor of eliminating stop day.
In the e-mail, Phipps said that she would like the committee members to consider the change as part of a larger issue of making the University’s calendar more flexible, including possibly starting class a few days later.
Phipps said that the calendar committee would consider the vote and make a recommendation in the spring. She said that if it decided to recommend that stop day be eliminated, the committee would present options of an “acceptable trade-off” to Student Senate. The committee must finish a report with a recommendation by April 1, 2008.
“It wouldn’t be done without a careful consideration,” Phipps said.
Phipps also said that more student input would be garnered before making a recommendation.
Pacey said that he voted against eliminating stop day because he worked as a resident assistant for Student Housing for two years and saw students use the day productively. He said that binge drinking would happen with or without stop day.
“Students are going to make bad decisions whether they do it on a Thursday night or a Friday night,” Pacey said.
The vote happened in the same semester that Hannah Love, Dodge City senior and student body president, asked the KU administration to look into implementing a “dead week” the week before finals. During a dead week, professors would be prohibited from giving assignments or tests to students.
Phipps said that looking into dead week was not something the calendar committee had been asked to do. She also said that if any changes were made to stop day, they would not go into effect until 2012 because the University sets its calendar several years in advance.
— Edited by Jeff Briscoe
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