For the past two years, Loyola students have had a Mardi Gras holiday with only two days off from classes.

Next year, however, Loyola will return to having a week off for Mardi Gras break.

The main reason why students did not have a full week off for Mardi Gras this year had to do with how holidays fell on the 2010 calendar.

The dilemma for the university was trying to schedule around holidays and still keep the required number of minutes per credit hour.

A three-credit hour class, for example, should have 2,100 minutes of class time. Since the commencement ceremony will be earlier this year, May 8, the Mardi Gras holiday had to be cut to two days.

Michael T. Rachal, director of Administrative Services, organizes the Loyola academic calendar.

He pointed out that in 2015, the same problem will occur, but he plans to shift class times and days without compromising spring semester holidays such as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Mardi Gras or Easter Break.

“May 1 was on a Saturday and did not offer enough days in the academic calendar,” he said.

Rachal said the solution is to “adjust class times to accommodate a shortfall of less than 2,100 minutes thus, no holiday being compromised.”

A solution to this problem, according to Rachal, is to lengthen the class time during evening classes in order to make up for fewer nights.

Factors such as the date of Tulane’s commencement ceremony also taking place at the Louisiana Superdome, having a full week of classes before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the law school’s American Bar Association conference in the first week of January and the floating dates of Easter and Carnival are taken into consideration when planning the second half of the academic year.

Rachal said he hopes to start the second semester at the same time for undergraduate, graduate and law classes.

However, the law school may not be able to begin at the same time as the rest of the university due to requirements by American Bar Association, which requires a certain number of hours per course.

“The key is deciding to resolve changing class times,” Rachal said.

Although undergraduate students will have the whole week off for Mardi Gras break, law students will return to class on Ash Wednesday in the 2011 spring semester due to ABA requirements.

Music industry studies freshman, Shane Billiot, said he looks forward to having a week off.

“I think the entire week off for Mardi Gras in 2011 will be a positive modification that will allow us students to reorganize before going back to the normal schedule,” Billiot said.

Santiago Caicedo can be reached at [email protected]