Fall break was approved by the Faculty Senate on March 16 with a 20-3 vote and will be implemented for the upcoming 2018-19 academic year. According to Faculty Senate President Joe Wert, fall break will be held within the first couple of weeks in October and will align the IUS calendar with other IU schools.

 
Student Body President Mark Jallayu said he proposed the idea for a fall break after seeing a student complain on social media about needing one. Jallayu said he began working toward pushing for a change in the schedule and met with Associate Professor and Coordinator of Political Science Program Wert to discuss what could be done.

 
After sending a survey to students and getting more than 700 responses, Jallayu said only 55 students said no to having a fall break.

 
The faculty senate is comprised of multiple committees in order to represent all schools on campus. According to Jallayu, only one school, the school of social science, initially voted to support fall break. Jallayu said he reached out to each school within the faculty senate to discuss the effects for students and faculty.

 
Jallayu said he contacted Assistant Professor of Journalism, Horizon Adviser and Faculty Senator Adam Maksl in the hope of getting his help with an amendment to his proposal. Jallayu said a new survey was created and sent out to students.

 
“Fall break has been rejected over the past three years,” Jallayu said. “But this is something that is in the best interest of the students and in the best interest of the professors.”
Maksl said students often use the break for academic purposes and fall break could be a cost-free strategy that can have a positive effect on students. Maksl said the outcomes of the schedule will be reevaluated down the road when determining if the break should be continued.

 
“Fall break will give students and faculty members a little breathing room,” Maksl said. “It could have a positive effect on retaining students, especially those transitioning into college life.”

Personal Counselor Michael Day said students often become worn out and mental health can be affected, causing students to stop showing up to class. Day said the month of October has the highest amount of sessions with students, further establishing the effect school may have after a certain amount of weeks.

 
“A lot of students come in saying that they are overwhelmed, stressed out and need a break,” Day said in the faculty senate meeting. “We hospitalized four students in October. They seem to give up some time in the middle of that month. That speaks to me as being worn out at that point and a lot of them drop out.”

 
According to Maksl, fall break will have a minimal effect as the winter session will be increasing class times by ten minutes and winter break will be shortened from four weeks to about three and a half.

 
Although the dates have not been approved for the 2018-19 academic calendar, concern was mentioned during the meeting about classes that are held once a week.

 
Maksl said, despite the scheduling for fall break, classes will still meet for the same amount of days and will not be neglected. Maksl said while there have been concerns regarding breaks, travel and snow days, there are a lot of solutions available.

 
“This does reduce the number of days students meet before that last day to withdraw from a class,” Associate Professor of Accountancy and Chair of Academic Policies, Chris Bjornson, said in the meeting. “It is an unintended negative consequence.”

 
Professor of Fine Arts, Anne Allen, said that matching the schedule with other IU campuses, the common calendar, would help when teaching online courses, especially during spring break. Allen said that often for online courses, students from other campuses are inconvenienced by the differing schedules.

 
“I think what we need to keep in mind is what’s in the best academic interest of our students, whether it’s break or no break,” Allen said in the meeting. “I really think that needs to be the primary concern. I think in the end it needs to be what is best for our students.”

 
According to the IU website, spring break for other IU campuses is held from March 12 to March 19 this year, differing from the scheduled IUS spring break of March 27 to April 2.

 
“Historically, our spring break has been at the same time that the Floyd County school system has their spring break,” Wert said. “This was done at a time where we had a much larger nontraditional student base on our campus. It was felt that it would be helpful to them if we had the same spring break as the local school district.”

 
Wert said that, although spring break at IU Southeast was originally scheduled to help parents with children in school, there is no longer a reason to have the same spring break with the county, as there are fewer students affected than in previous years.

 
“One big disadvantage doing it this way is that we have a lot of students who are taking online classes from other regional campuses,” Wert said. “We have students from other regional campuses who take our online classes. It makes it difficult when that spring break doesn’t coincide with each other.”

 
IU Southeast political science graduate Mason Moody said he currently attends Maurer School of Law at IU Bloomington and has experienced inconveniences during the breaks.

 
“My friends were almost always on different breaks,” Moody said. “As a college student, it makes it difficult to keep in touch with those friends from high school.”

 
Shelbie Porter, outdoor recreation, parks and human ecology senior at IU Bloomington, said while dating her boyfriend, an IUS alumni, they were both on different breaks.

 
Wert said the Academic Policies Committee, a committee within the faculty senate that looks over IUS policies and procedures, is the first step to changing the academic schedule and will need approval from the faculty senate.

 
According to Campus Vacations Spring Break, the average break is held in mid-March, allowing students a break shortly after midterms.

 
“I think that the fact that our spring break is late doesn’t leave a whole lot of time between spring break and the end of the semester,” Wert said. “I think that makes it a little more difficult for people to gear up again for that last couple of weeks of the semester.”

 
Wert said spring break scheduling is often discussed and the campus may be moving toward a common calendar with other IU campuses in the near future.