<p>It can be a challenge for internationals that have a long way to travel during a shortened winter break.</p>
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<p>Well, fire departments operate on Christmas day. If someone sets his/her dried out Christmas tree on fire, it may be useful for the fire department to come.</p>
<p>UW-Madison has a policy listed in their academic calendar where students can be exempted from classes/exams for their religious holy days without any penalties. The school semesters changed to a September start date (all Wisconsin public schools must start in September as of a while ago for the tourism industry- but no one said after Labor Day…). After my freshman year they changed the schedule to end the semester in
December, making it a lot easier to enjoy a longer break without intentions to study.</p>
<p>Christmas is a Federal holiday- begun in the days when people were not at all culturally sensitive- practical to give a huge majority of the population who cared time off as well. I am always bothered with just about everything shut down- parks, stores and most restaurants, but understand it lets the employees have the day off.</p>
<p>We can’t accommodate all holidays for all people or we would never find days to work. History has determined some- such as Christmas. I doubt it would be possible to get the Federal government to give their employees fewer paid days off.</p>
<p>UC can accommodate because of their quarter system. Our school district managed to use Good Friday as a “teacher work day” off (ie time off because teachers had to work evenings for parent teacher conferences). Long ago city governments had at least a half day- again, try taking away paid holidays from public sector employees.</p>
<p>We will always live in an imperfect society. It makes it even harder when some religions use a lunar calendar. Nobody cares about Indian (Hindu and other) holy or festival days- and Indians generally are easy going about it so it won’t happen, either. I sure hope they don’t do variable starts every year to accommodate variable calendars. It is hard enough to deal with fixed dates in the common calendar.</p>
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<p>glido, I’m guessing that international students who’re attending a UC are either a) well off enough to fly home during break, even if it’s only a week long, or b) on a tight budget which means they can’t fly home during break, even if it’s three weeks long.</p>
<p>Limewine,
Respectfully, I am not Christian and do not see Christmas as a “national” holiday.</p>
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Yes but it takes a couple of days to recover from jet lag due to different time zones. By the time the student adjusts to his country’s time zone, with the shortened break, it’s time to head back to school again with barely enough time to recover.</p>
<p>Winter holidays make for grueling travel even for domestic out-of-state students. Airfares go up for travel dates after December 20 and availability goes down. I’m curious how the semester system avoids this conflict. The kids will have already started classes during the Holy Days. Are they excused from classes during the worship period?</p>
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<p>Yes, not that anyone really needs to be “excused” from, say, a large lecture class. 
A religious holiday may impact scheduling a midterm or a paper due date. </p>
<p>This is the case at many, many colleges, not just the UCs. There are policies in place to deal with this. A student who needs this kind of accommodation will generally be looking for schools which will allow this. </p>
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<p>With weekends, it’s 9 days of break. Students go on international vacations/service trips over short spring breaks and they seem to manage.</p>
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<p>I agree. Dec. 25 really has no religious significance. It is not JC’s birthday, as many are taught. That date was simply close to the winter solstice when the Pagan holiday of Saturnalia was celebrated and which the Christians essentially co-opted. (You can easily verify this by spending a few minutes with your good friend, Google.) Since there is no actual religious significance to the date, why can’t we just celebrate Christmas on the last Monday in December? Having it fall on Wednesday this past year was really disruptive to work productivity. Many people either took off the Monday and Tuesday before, the Thursday and Friday after, or what the heck, why not take the whole week? Celebrating Christmas on a Monday every year would mean Christmas Eve would always fall on a Sunday, a nice day to go to church, or spend with your family, or watch football, whatever your preference. And most people would get a three-day weekend. Who’s on board? (By the way, I feel the same way about Independence Day – yes, I know, the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4. So what. Why can’t we just celebrate it the first Monday in July?)</p>
<p>Respectfully, I am not Christian and do not see Christmas as a “national” holiday.</p>
<p>Christmas is a national holiday, whether you celebrate it or not.</p>
<p>The same if anyone moved to a country where some other day (associated with a different majority religion) is a nat’l holiday.</p>
<p>If I moved to Country X and one of its national holidays was a non-christian holiday, I wouldn’t run around and say, “I don’t consider it a national holiday”. It is…and I would say so. </p>
<p>I’m glad that the UCs are doing this. Schools, like many places, have to make wise decisions. If too many profs or students would miss certain days because of their faiths, then an accommodation should be made. And, if those days happened during the school session, I would call it a School Holiday…even if the day had nothing to do with my religion.</p>
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<p>So what? UC is currently comprised of only a small % of internationals (<10%). Does it really make sense to base a policy on a small percentage of your populations’s vacation plans?</p>
<p>I’m in favor of accommodating as many holidays as possible, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish. Why not? It’s a matter of respect and tolerance. Unlike other countries which have state religions, the U.S. has a constitution which promises not to establish one religion and which guarantees its citizens the right to the free exercise of their religions. If the scheduling becomes excessive or burdensome, then it’s right to tweak the schedule. But I tend to think we should start from the premise that we try to accommodate rather than the other way around. All of us deserve the same degree of respect for our observances. </p>
<p>I’ve lived in four different states and in each state the school schedule accommodated Good Friday. So much for the federal/non-federal distinction.</p>
<p>I’m selfishly thankful that UC doesn’t alter their schedule for Chinese New Year because the students always share their delicious moon cakes. I’m not sure how many of the Asians who comprise close to 50% of UC’s population celebrate the Lunar New Year, but they are virtually ignored. The Lunar New Year is as important to many Chinese as Thanksgiving is to Americans.</p>
<p>You can buy moon cakes at the same places that the students buy them (it is not like such places are rare or hard to find).</p>
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<p>I respectfully disagree. Individuals can make the choice about whether it is worth it to them to miss class because of personal religious beliefs. They should “tolerate” the fact that secular institutions don’t have any obligation to accommodate their religious holidays. I don’t see what place religion has in academics and if we try to accommodate everyone’s important holidays we will run out of days to have class. Also, if religion is so important, attend a religious school. I am not trying to sound harsh or intolerant but I just think it is ridiculous.</p>
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<p>In this particular case (quarter system schools shifting their calendars), the accommodation is essentially cost-free to the school and others not of the religion in question and likely has some benefits to the school, such as not dealing with as many individual absences among employees and students, and increasing goodwill.</p>
<p>Note that we do not see anything similar with the semester system schools, where changing the calendars to accommodate would be significantly more costly.</p>
<p>I’m not advocating running out of class days in an attempt to accommodate every minor holiday. What I am suggesting is an attempt to accommodate as much as is practicable, without preference for any one group. If it’s ridiculous to accommodate “everyone’s holidays”, then let’s take all holidays off the table and add them back in based on need. Does Good Friday require a day off from class? Some of the fast days in Ramadan require that observers don’t work at all. Especially when there’s a significant Muslim community attending the school, it makes sense to schedule around the day or days in question or at least to post lectures from that day and make sure that exams aren’t scheduled during this period. By contrast, Chinese New Year does not require taking off from work or school so there’s no need to close down classes. If one of the Jewish high holidays, which also prohibits work, conflicts with move-in day, then either allow affected students to move in earlier or tweak the schedule to start later. It’s a matter of perspective and orientation. This is after all a * public * institution that should not favor one religion over another. </p>
<p>I have to say, I’m kind of taken aback by a suggestion that someone who cares about religious observance should attend a religious school. When I was in public elementary school, the kids attending catechism class left every Wednesday afternoon and academic programming stopped completely for the rest of us. (We loved those Wednesday afternoons and felt sorry for the kids who had to leave for religious school.) No one suggested that these kids should attend Catholic school. We sang Christmas songs and made Easter bunnies and no one ever suggested that this should be left to religious school.</p>
<p>^Well, times have changed. Today most public schools would get in a lot of trouble for leading kids in Christmas hymns or doing other things associated with a specific religion. It’s not about favoring one religion over another–it’s about acknowledging/accommodating ANY religion.</p>
<p>The fact is, many people are agnostic or atheistic and they impose no demands on colleges for their own personal preferences. I don’t see why a secular institution should have to “care” about religious holidays any more than it should concern itself with coordinating schedules around the NBA finals or Downton Abbey or the gun deer season.</p>
<p>Times haven’t changed that much. Kids still sing hymns. Christian holidays and Christian references continue to be at the center of American life, even Nativity scenes are considered ok on public ground as long as they are carefully placed. The difference is that now public schools balance Christian hymns with Hanukkah songs and references to Kwanza. If we truly throw out all religion, I suppose that’s fair but realistically it’s not going to happen. Personally, I prefer an approach where we try to accommodate if it’s possible. As ucbalumnus pointed out above, this one is a cost-free accommodation that earns the school good will while also reducing the hassle of individual absences and accommodations. Again, why not?</p>
<p>There’s a certain point where accommodating religious observances becomes unfeasible. Clearly, the UCs don’t feel that they are at that point, and have come up what sounds like a reasonable modification. It isn’t a matter of showing preferential treatment to one religion or another; it is a matter of logistics. If a significant portion of your students and/or faculty will not attend class or orientation events, possibly requiring various accommodations, making a change just makes sense.</p>
<p>Frankly, the fact that Christmas is a national holiday is probably iffy from a constitutional perspective. If it hadn’t already been established as a national holiday and people wanted to make it one today - or if certain legislatures decided to do so on the state level - I can’t imagine it passing muster. I’m not troubled by it and see no reason to change it, but I don’t think “well, Christmas is a national holiday and Yom Kippur isn’t” is a good reason for a particular school not to respond to the needs of its own population.</p>
<p>70 % of the class in my public elementary school was Jewish. It would have made more sense to open for Christmas than for the High Holidays. Fortunately, we had both off, and still managed to get our 180 days in.</p>