Spring breaks a good thing we could have

"And Your Point Is..." 1 of 2

Chris Dunham

Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: Opinion

Oh how the big picture gets overlooked.

Students seem to think "ooh, a week off…me likey" and don't understand what that week off costs them. The break is truly unfair to professors and students.

This is why I propose that SSU does away with Spring Break. Give me a chance to state my case before rioting.

Though SSU would be unusual for not having Spring Break, it wouldn't be alone. Brigham Young University (BYU), is an institution that does not have a break like this. They, like SSU, are on the semester system, and don't want to disadvantage their students by taking a break.

Not having a break allows students to wrap up their year earlier than other institutions. BYU's last day of final exams this year will be April 23, and they will have their commencement ceremonies before May 1.

For anyone counting, that puts their final exams ending 17 days before ours do at SSU.

The benefit of adding a couple weeks to a multiple month summer vacation? Firstly, our students would be out and able to look for jobs in their hometowns earlier. Most high schools wrap up their year in mid-May. Our students, when they go home, find themselves competing with a number of high school students from the community for summer and seasonal jobs.

By getting out of class those extra weeks, our students would be able to get a head start on their respective home towns' youths in the job search.

Adding to the break would make summer vacation nearly four months. Think what a person can do with that time. They could work to make money, do an internship, independent research, or even be lazy in that third of a year of free time.

The change would also give students that go year-round an actual chance to breathe in the summer. By adding a week of break either before or after summer semester, students that attend college year round can feel like they've had some sort of separation from their college workload before coming back to class.

During the semester, with the timing of the break, professors have been forced to use Spring Break as a guide for mapping out a schedule.

The break forces each professor's hand when forming a syllabus and making a test schedule. Most classes took an exam the week before Spring Break. Many did so on their last session before break.

I've heard of and seen professors that have stretched out material over more class sessions than they'd like to so students would be able to take an exam in the last week before break. There have also been professors who try to squeeze extra material into the time before break so they can get an exam over with.

The goal of a university is to educate, not to adjust material to suit a break.

With the student side of the break, I'll stay away from the whole underage drinking and wild parties issue of Spring Break and stick to academics.

The break, for students, completely throws them off course for the semester. For those that didn't take a mid-term right before the break, they probably lost a great deal of the knowledge they have been expected to retain throughout the semester.

I concede the fact that Spring Break is a good time for students for relax and unwind from the pressures of the semester.

But what good does this temporary escape really do? This week, coming back, I feel no different from the way I did before the break. A week is not long enough for students to be removed from their stress, but is long enough for students to forget what they learned before break (leading to more stresses).

Let's stop wasting our week and help students get on to summer earlier.


Audience: Students who enjoy their spring break and want to keep having it.
(I think he actually has two audiences, one is for the professors who like spring break, and he makes a separate argument to them, I am going to focus on his argument for the students).

Argument:
WATCO spring break on students' stress.
Claim: spring break causes more stress on students.
Reason: because by not getting out of school earlier than the high schools students have to compete to get jobs in the summer.

Goal: Convince SSU to get rid of spring break.

How:
Ethos: I think that the writer struggled to build a relationship with his audience. I kind of talks down to them, especially when he puts words in their mouth: "ooh, a week off…me likey."
It's not a very intelligent phrase and it makes it seem like his audience must not be very intelligent. Then he asks them to hear him out before they start rioting, so he realizes that they aren't going to like his position, but he he is placing himself on the opposite side from his audience. He automatically pits himself against them. He is a student, which makes him more credible since he does go to school with them, but he could have used that more to his advantage if he wanted to.
Sufficient: He uses BYU as a source of a school that doesn't have a spring break, but compared to all the other schools that do it doesn't seem like enough, especially since BYU is very different from most other Universities. I think he could have used more sources to help convince his audience, but he doesn't do that bad of a job.
Logos: It makes logical sense to want to get out of school early if you are going to be needing a job in the summer and if you want a longer summer break. As long as they can take take their emotional attachment to spring break out of the picture, than he makes a pretty good argument that is relevant to one of the things they worry about.

Effective: I don't think this is going to convince many students to give up their spring break. If a student has had a hard time in the past getting a summer job, than it would be more effective on them, but otherwise students assume that they eventually will get a job (although that might change along with our econmic crisis...)