WSU’s spring break causing frustration and calls for change

PULLMAN, WASH – (Murrow News 8) Washington State University’s recent change to the traditional weeklong spring break has caused frustrations, and students have called for a change.

“They didn’t seem to really take into consideration what students wanted and what faculty wanted. They kind of just went ahead and were like, ‘We’re going to give you three days off instead of a full week…figure it out,’” said Kelsey Lawrence, a WSU global campus student.

Although Lawrence’s classes are normally virtual, she felt the impact of the scattered break days.

“There’s no real rhyme or reason, I already give myself days off from schoolwork, so it doesn’t really affect me in any way because it’s like, ‘I technically have a day off, but I have something due Monday I could be working on that right now,’” Lawrence said.

When the university announced their plans for an altered spring break in last October, many students expressed their frustrations and concerns about mental health with the university.

“Having a full week off allows me to decompress and reset myself in order to finish the semester off strongly,” Lawrence said.

In response to the growing concerns about replacing a weeklong spring break with three instruction-less weekdays, Jilian Hutchison, an Associated Students of Washington State University senator, got to work.

“I started actually writing it last semester,” Hutchison said about a resolution that she created to prohibit assignments from being due on the designated break days. The resolution was unanimously passed among ASWSU senators.

“Given the fact that we kind of got the traditional spring break taken away from us, I felt like it was really important that we insured those break days are true break days,” Hutchison said.

Once the resolution is passed, Hutchinson will distribute it to the deans of the university, the provost, the chair of the faculty senate, and even the university president.

“It’s to encourage them to kind of think about it in the same way that the students are thinking about it…say, ‘Hey we’re drowning out here, please give us a stick to pull us back out of the water,’” Hutchinson said.

WSU students share the same hope and sentiment for the university.

“You’re having these town hall meetings where your students are saying we need a full spring break, we need XY and Z, and you were just going, ‘Okay we hear you…’, and then brushing it off. Listen to what your students are saying,” Lawrence said.