Pro
Written by Nysheka Herring
As students return to school from their week long Spring break, many are in disbelief that a week was not long enough. Nearly 40 percent of undergraduate students have jobs or other things in life that needs to be tackled.
When it comes to college life, it also means more adulthood issues that needs to be added. Not only are many students balancing family, kids, bills and homework from multiple classes. The biggest one is working; those students have to bend around school schedules to fit their work schedules during those academic years.
During breaks is when we try to attend to those things that we abandon during the school semester. We try to spend time with our lovers, the next day we add in the kids, work regular hours that we miss during school days, and even add in family vacations or even visit family from out of state.
With all those average in, the week is suddenly gone and it is back to school work, wondering, where did that week go. We wish for an extra week because it wasn’t long enough.
California may be more easy to take a two week spring break because they average in Caesar’s Chavez Day and non instructional day. So when you think about it, the week before spring break is an additional two days off. Why not get the best of both words and kill the additional three as well.
It would even help teachers out because their classes wouldn’t be as altered for a class that close on Thursday due to school closer but the the class on Tuesday have a lesson that day. It puts the class off their schedule work assignment.
With so much to do in a student’s life, it may even play a huge difference in academic life if we had that long break to recoup and let our mind settle and give it a rest. It’s almost the same when secondary schools get two weeks out for Christmas and return after New Years with a lot of energy.
They are more focused on work, grades are a lot better during that time and it’s a fresh start for them to improve themselves.
As for adults, they try to balance all these things between the months of August to June with very little breaks in between. That’s another reason why they take a semester or a year off of school to work more or get their life in order.
Students often finish assignments weekly, leave school to go home to do homework that takes time and tend to a working family. Where is the time for us students to rest and not have a nerve breakdown because they are overwhelmed.
That extra week for students would definitely be well worth it since there aren’t any breaks during the school year besides winter break. Other than that, peers get a day or two here and there which does not amount to anything. Labor day is only one day and the next break is Thanksgiving which is not a week for college students, Christmas is two weeks if your not doing winter classes, next break is President day and then a week for spring break.
Con
Written by Abdul Ali
In 1928, Fort Lauderdale built Florida’s first olympic size pool, which would be the first ripple to start the wave of spring break.
Spring break has been one week for as long as people can remember and the notion to add another week seems preposterous. The span of just one week seems like the perfect amount of time, not too little and not too much.
Spring break’s purpose is to serve as time off for students so they can unwind and destress for a week, but studies show how spring break is actually hurting students in some cases.
A recent study by the National Institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism showed that nearly half of all college students binge drink and during spring break, this is taken to the extreme.
According to dualdiagnosis.org men reported drinking an average of 18 drinks per day on spring break and women were reported drinking an average of 10 drinks per day.
In the same study 50 percent of men, and 40 percent of women drank until they became sick or passed out at least once.
With this amount of alcohol consumption going on at all hours of the day for a week straight things can escalate to chaos rather quickly. Not only do students get arrested, but they can also get seriously hurt. Adding time to spring break would only increase these numbers and enable those who partake in these festivities.
Along with injury potential as well as arrest numbers going up, studies show that students are more likely to partake in promiscuous behaviors.
According to the Louisville Cardinal, a study by the American Medical Association found that, “Three out of five (women) had friends who had unprotected sex while on a spring break trip and one in five regretted their vacation sexual experiences.” Harmful sexual experiences is just another reason that the duration of spring break is just right where it is.
Now one can imagine that while spring break is a time to unwind and de-stress, it is also a time of high stress for police enforcement. That means the city has to spend money to accommodate the public.
According to an article on Fox News, Miami beach spent 1.5 million dollars to control spring breakers. “Miami Beach Police Chief Daniel Oates said the department has had almost 2,000 combined arrests over the last three years during the spring break season. The unruliness, he said, is putting lives at risk and straining police resources.” Oats said.
With public and student safety on the line, one week of spring break seems to be hard enough on police officials, not to mention the students that are negatively impacted by the week-long holiday.
Intoxicated students causing mayhem for an additional week just seems like a bad idea for the public.
Spring break as it stands now sits comfortably with a duration of one week and is more than enough time to recharge for the rest of spring semesters.
