An Unofficial Holiday?

Still stuck on campus doing psets and eating HUHDS food while many of your friends are already back home watching TV and dining on homemade cuisine?

Although other reforms to the academic calendar were enacted in 2009, the College still requires students to attend classes on the day before Thanksgiving, a policy that is reflected in the academic calendars of five other Ivy League institutions.

Despite this measure, however, many professors and teaching fellows have decided to either cancel Wednesday classes or make them optional for students to attend.

Xiaojing Yang '14 said that she disagrees with the College’s decision to hold classes on Wednesday. “Other schools like Yale are already starting break,” she said.

Yale and Dartmouth both have already revised their calendars to include the day before Thanksgiving as part of the designated period of break.

“All my classes on Wednesday have been canceled,” Yang said. “Professors and students alike would rather be with their families than be in school.”

Some students told us they decided that it is more worth their time to skip class on Wednesday and leave on Tuesday in order to enjoy a vacation long enough to warrant the travel.

“I’m skipping class tomorrow because it takes me six hours to get home,” said one freshman. “Given the fact that I haven’t seen my family and friends in months, I want to have as much time with them as possible.”

Photo by Terrell Woods/The Harvard Crimson.