President: Fall Reading Week? What do you think?

Hey everyone. Hope the term’s treating you well. Don’t worry if you didn’t do so well on your midterms. That’s what finals are for. If you did do well on your midterms, then congratulations!! You have nothing to worry about.

Last week I had a meeting with the Dean, and we ended up talking about this whole fall reading week issue. If you haven’t heard, there’s been talks about having a Thursday and a Friday off sometime in the middle of Fall terms, probably right before 1^st year hell week. This is not just some rumor that is flying about. The Provost has asked the Dean what she thinks of having these two days off. As of now, the Dean does not want to implement it. She wants to look into it further before making a decision, and part of looking into it includes gauging the students’ thoughts towards the issue, and that’s where we come in.

The Dean has asked the Engineering Society to help her with getting feedback from the student body. So by the time you’re reading this, a survey should be floating around (I’ll have the link to the survey on the Facebook page and out on the mailing list as well) asking whether you think having two days off in the Fall term is a good idea or not. But there’s a catch.

A term must have a certain number of school days to meet accreditation requirement. So these two days need to be taken from somewhere else. The current proposal has no details as to where these extra two days will be coming from. They can be two Saturdays, they can be taken from Orientation Week, they can be taken from the end of the term (although highly unlikely), or somewhere else that we haven’t thought of.

So let us know what you think. Take a 5-minute break from “studying”, fill out the survey, and let your friends know about this survey. Because the more results we have, the better idea the Dean will have about our thoughts, and the less likely you’ll be pissed off when a decision is made (you know, assuming you responded like the majority of students).

So keep your eyes and ears open for the survey, and if you don’t see it on the Facebook page or in your email, then come bother me about it until it’s out.

Cheers,

Yasser.