College Adds Two Days to OWAW

While the number of days that all students will be allowed back on campus before classes begin will be extended from eight to ten for winter break in 2011, much of the College’s policy for Optional Winter Activities Week and January break will remain unchanged next year, Dean of the College Evelynn M. Hammonds announced in an email to students yesterday.

According to Hammonds, most of the programming for next year’s OWAW will continue to be initiated and planned by students. Hammonds indicated in the announcement that the College “anticipates an increased number of activities” next year but provided few details about funding or planning for such programming.

Hammonds’ statement also outlined the guidelines for next year’s winter break—the period between Dec. 21 and Jan. 12 when the College is closed. The residential policies will remain relatively unchanged: students with approved reasons, including varsity athletics, thesis writing, and lab research, will be allowed on campus.

Next year, students with off-campus internships in Boston and Cambridge, who were denied official housing but in many cases stayed anyway with the permission of their House staff, will also be approved for Winter Break housing.

In addition, Annenberg will remain the only open dining hall during the three-week winter break, despite student calls in a College survey for more convenient and social dining options during the winter break period.

The decision comes a week after Hammonds presented the results of the survey on this year’s winter break at a Faculty meeting. While the report indicated that over 80 percent of respondents who participated in OWAW were satisfied, only 37 percent of the 924 respondents attended OWAW, and individual comments called for more formal programming, especially college-sponsored classes.

In February, the Undergraduate Council—which provided much of the funding for the student-initiated programming during this winter’s OWAW—recommended that the College expand the period when all students would be allowed on campus to the two weeks before classes began. The Council’s report also asked the University to increase the promotion of OWAW to students, encourage faculty-led programming, and allow students to register private parties. Despite this call for an extended OWAW period, the changes to this year’s OWAW are mainly logistical.

UC President Senan Ebrahim ’12 said that he is disappointed that the full two-week OWAW was not created, but he called the two-day extension a “step in the right direction.”

The report presented to the Faculty called for the College to more clearly define the goals of winter break, explaining that “the College should determine whether it wants OWAW to be one of the hallmarks of the undergraduate experience.”

But plans for the third year of the expanded winter break, prompted by the University-wide schedule change, do not clarify the role of winter break in the College.

“It’s going to be a long time before the UC and the student body gets the winter break that they want,” Ebrahim said.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.