Pitt students deserve more holidays

Yesterday, while all you suckers were out and going about your weekday work schedules or… Yesterday, while all you suckers were out and going about your weekday work schedules or sitting through your four-hour chem lab at school, I was sleeping right through my job, at home. Of course, I can’t get away with that every day, but those of you who have encyclopedic knowledge of obscure facts, or those of you who looked at a calendar recently, may have seen that yesterday, June 14, was Flag Day.

As national holidays go, Flag Day is one of the lesser known ones. It was invented in 1885 by a schoolteacher, and publicly proclaimed a holiday in 1949 by former President Truman. Usually, a good national holiday gets you off school or work for at least a day and gets a whole lot of stores to have sales. But alas, poor Flag Day, nestled uncomfortably between Independence Day and Memorial Day, never really gets its spot in the sun. It, like the tallest midget, still gets overlooked and greeted with a yawn.

So perhaps you are comfortable leaving Flag Day in the wastebasket of the calendar along with Constitution Day and Groundhog Day, but I am not content. I will only be happy when everyone in the nation gets off work, and the holiday is heralded by large banners in Sears, Wal-Marts and malls across the country, marked by nationwide half-off sales.

But for me, the final victory will be when the University of Pittsburgh recognizes it.

You see, our old dear alma mater really is uptight. Assuming that you do not linger around at school after final exams are over, and that you follow the normal student behavior, then we observe a total of two holidays during our time in Pittsburgh. In other words, Pitt is only closed for two days through out our entire eight-month tenure each school year.

For Thanksgiving, winter vacation and spring vacation, we are herded home much like common cattle. Indeed, the University does close the residence halls for winter vacation, which means the “get the hell out” isn’t just a friendly suggestion, it’s the law.

On top of this, our winter break this year is, assuming you have a Saturday final — which you probably do — is from December 18 to January 3. Now, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy being at school more than being at home, but this is hardly even two weeks.

What we need, and what the University seemingly goes out of its way to deny us, is time for students to remain on campus, but not attend class. The “weekends” that they give us now are just not enough. Everyone knows of kids at other schools who get such elaborate holidays as the ever-elusive “Fall Break.” Some get Election Day off; for others it’s Columbus Day. But let’s face it, the University could afford to give us at least a three-day weekend for President’s Day without the world crashing down around us.

I know of other universities that give attending students “reading days” before finals. These are days when classes are cancelled — often for a full week before the onset of finals — and students can theoretically concentrate only on their studies.

Carnegie Mellon even goes so far as to give kids three days off for a spring carnival, but that is probably because the average CMU student is an over-worked computer science major of some sort and has long since lost the will to live.

But the point is, while Carnegie Mellon kids are out there having more fun than we are, Chancellor Nordenberg walks around the 42nd floor of the Cathedral, with a monocle fastened tightly in his eye, plotting ways to deny us the leisure time that we so richly deserve.

Point blank: Pitt needs to add on more days for students to relax during the school year. Between being among the first colleges to start, and the earliest one, that I know of, to let out in the spring, we are way out of sync with the timetables of other universities. This, and students have little to look forward to during the school year. Even making up a good excuse for a three-day weekend now and again would cure what is otherwise a joyless and cruel year, devoid of any hope for happiness.

Even if the man says that Columbus Day isn’t a real holiday, Sam Morey asks you to join him in skipping class for it. E-mail him your favorite holidays at smorey88@hotmail.com.