Last Full-Week Thanksgiving Break? Illinois Central College Will Shorten Break to Three Days in 2024
Illinois Central College students recently enjoyed a full-week Thanksgiving break, but this might have been the last. Next year, Thanksgiving break will be shortened from an entire week to three days: Wednesday through Friday.
This is not the first time ICC has had a three-day Thanksgiving break. It switched from a three-day schedule to a full week about ten years ago.
One of the things that prompted ICC to revert back to the full week was a 2020 Illinois law that made all major election days a state holiday, meaning colleges must be closed. In 2024, the United States presidential general election will take place.
“Every other year that Tuesday in November is an election day. So we lost an instructional day,” says Stacy Gehrig, co-chair of the ICC Calendar Committee, a group of both faculty and staff from many departments responsible for deciding ICC’s yearly schedule.
Because of this, there were simply not enough instructional days to fulfill the minimum requirement for colleges next schoolyear, Gehrig says. These need to be re-added somewhere else.
The decision to have a shortened break will not only account for the lost election day but also give space in case of a need to cancel school, such as a snow day.
Gehrig says she believes it makes the most sense to add back two days of Thanksgiving break compared to the alternatives, which would be adding days at the beginning or end of the semester. Both of these would interfere with administrative procedures that need to take place during these times, which would be inconvenient, she said.
In addition to being a technical necessity, some teachers believe that this is going to be beneficial for students.
“I have noticed that every time we come back from a break, students are not doing better. I feel and they feel that ‘I wish I didn’t have this long of a break at this time,’” says ICC chemistry professor Pradeepa David, co-chair of the ICC Calendar Committee.
Although the change to a shortened break is official, this decision has not yet been formally announced to the student body. When Harbinger Student Media discussed this news with students in brief interviews, only a few of them had heard about the shortened break. Those of them who were already aware had heard from teachers, although even one of the teachers interviewed was unaware of the change.
Overall, students’ reactions varied greatly, ranging from not caring to reacting quite negatively to the change.
“That’s scary. We will have a shorter amount of time to relax and get our stuff together,” says Student Life student worker Christopher Gonzalez, who was quite disappointed upon hearing the news.
The Calendar Committee has heard comments similar to this. However, Gehrig says the committee believes the Thanksgiving Break comes too late in the semester to function as an effective break. It comes about 13 weeks into the semester.
“By the time you have that time off, you are just down, mentally exhausting and physically, and then you come back real fast and have to finish all these major projects and papers and take finals,” says Gehrig.
Gehrig says she believes a better alternative to Thanksgiving Break is a fall break halfway through the semester. She says that the Calendar Committee is considering adding it to the schedule, although there are no active plans to do so.
A mid-semester fall break is common practice in many colleges and universities, as is a three-day Thanksgiving break.
For example, the local university Bradley University has a shortened Thanksgiving break and a three-day fall break in mid-October.
Another common argument from students against a shorter break is the need to travel.
Gehrig says she understands this but believes that this is not a significant problem for ICC. This is because, by and large, ICC is a commuter school with mostly local students, she says. Only a small minority of students have to travel a significant distance to visit family, unlike other universities.
Additionally, there still is the day before Thanksgiving which gives some amount of time for traveling.
Overall, Gehrig understands that this change may be difficult at first, but believes that students will get used to it.
“It might be a little bit of a change, but like with anything, change does bring good things.”