PEORIA, Ill. — Bradley University made a controversial change last week when administration moved the start of the Spring 2021 semester back one week, as well as eliminating the traditional spring break.
Instead of beginning on Jan. 20, the semester will now start on Jan. 27. The university said in a release that the goal is to allow more time between students going home in the fall and returning to campus in the in January.
Bradley University President Stephen Standifird said eliminating spring break was a decision made with safety in mind.
“Let’s minimize that off-campus activity, so that we can keep our students here,” said Standifird. “Find ways for them to engage here socially, but mitigate the possibility of them getting exposed to the virus and spreading it in various ways on campus.”
Standifird added that a majority of cases at Bradley this semester have come as a result of off-campus activities, so Bradley’s administration and Virus Response Team felt it was in their best interest to limit those activities as much as possible.
Student Body President Emma Hoyhtya said students were intensely frustrated when they heard of the decision.
“This change wasn’t exactly expected from students,” said Hoyhtya. “I don’t think any of us had even had the forethought to go ‘oh, they might take away our spring break.'”
“If people take a step back and think about it, they’ll probably understand the mentality going into it.”
Hoyhtya added that students are struggling right now, because it’s around the regular time when fall break would occur.
“Those kind of breaks are the things that we look forward to,” she said. “We use them as check marks throughout the semester.”
“To not have those right now has been really, really hard on us.”
President Standifird said Bradley is aware of the mental health ramifications that come from students not having their regular breaks.
“Unfortunately, as we continue to navigate around the virus we have to balance the issue of the mental break with the increased health and wellness challenges that creates on campus,” he said.
Standifird added that Bradley is “aggressively looking at” ways to create “mini-mental breaks” on campus to provide students relief during the semester while also keeping them on campus.
Hoyhtya said the university could implement some weekends with no assignments for possible mental breaks, or even having certain days designated to have no classes.
Karen Fragoso, Parliamentarian on Bradley’s Student Senate, said she came to the realization that next semester would be just as hard as the fall semester.
“The first thing I noticed is [the schedule changes] were very similar to the cut-off of fall break,” said Fragoso. “Next semester is going to be just as hard as this semester considering we don’t get a break anymore.”
Fragoso said this semester has been made more difficult because of a combination of factors, including transition to an extra online learning platform as well as some teachers not fully knowing how to educate online as well as in-person.
Many Bradley students have signed a petition this semester, much like last semester, to move to a pass/fail grading system for classes of students’ choice.
“We did research saying that online learning isn’t a quality education,” said Fragoso.
“So, the education we’re getting right now is less than quality, and it’s not fair for us to be graded on a regular grading scale when were not at that same advantage as being in-person.”
“I feel that Bradley right now is more concerned about not having COVID cases than they are about the quality of education that we’re getting.”
Bradley did move to a pass/fail grading system when the pandemic hit in Spring 2020.
Hoyhtya said the pandemic has been hard physically and mentally on students, but they hope administration will continue to look out for them and “have [the students] best interest at heart.”
Standifird gave props to students, faculty and staff for doing all they have to manage and slow the spread of COVID-19 at the university.
On-campus testing this week at Bradley yielded a positivity rate below 1%.
Full interview with Standifird:
Full interview with Hoyhtya:
Full interview with Fragoso:
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