University President the Rev. Kevin Wildes, S.J., announced the cancellation of fall break Wednesday afternoon in order to meet contact hour requirements between teachers and students. Wildes said he made the decision after “looking at everything late [Tuesday] night and into the morning.”
Prior to making the decision Wildes consulted the academic deans, the provost, Student Government Association President Cade Cypriano, political science senior, and the Student Bar Association President Carl Michel, law senior. Wildes said he wanted to make the announcement early enough for students to avoid making travel plans.
The two days of fall break are specifically placed into the university calendar in the event that makeup classes need to be held, Wildes said.
Brian Hays, chemistry junior, had already made plans for the break – to go on a brewery tour with his grandfather for their birthdays, which are just a day apart.
“It’s a family tradition,” Hays said, adding that this year, their birthdays just happened to be during fall break. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it now.”
He also had plans to check on a summer job in his hometown of Atlanta to make sure that he could work there this coming summer. “I won’t be able to get home and have time to do all that now,” Hays said.
Wildes thinks the Blackboard program worked well during the evacuation from Hurricane Gustav, but that “a lot of students had a hard time getting on Blackboard in places without power,” like Baton Rouge, which the hurricane hit harder than New Orleans. “I think that it is important for the future,” Wildes said, adding that once the provost’s office looks at how Blackboard worked during the hurricane evacuation, the university will be able to “get a sense of how successful Blackboard was.”
Hays says that his professors made use of Blackboard, but that he is still catching up on work.
“I just wish that we could have some kind of break between now and November,” Hays said. “It’s understandable, though. It just sucks.”
Jessica Erwin can be reached at [email protected].
