For another year, it looks as though Southeastern students will miss the fall break, this time due to Hurricane Isaac.
In a “Message from the Provost,” it was announced that Fall Break will be cancelled and designated as make up time due to Hurricane Issac.
“Because of Hurricane Isaac, Southeastern lost a little more than 4 class days of the Fall 2012 semester. While some faculty members are able to adequately make up the lost time via online instruction and additional assignments, others require additional face-to-face time with their students.”
The Faculty Senate met on Wednesday, Sept. 5 to discuss possible options to regain class time from the week that the university was shut down.
“From what I understand, yesterday our Provost Dr. Tammy Bourg came into faculty senate and spoke about some of the options, which are going to include a flexible break, or perhaps canceling break,” said Faculty Senate President Dr. Richard Schwartz.
The flexible break is an intriguing alternative to cutting out fall break all together, but has yet to go through the judgment of students.
“With the flexible plan, its means en lieu of classes, extra assignments could be given over break,” said Schwartz. “It would be almost equivalent to the classroom time missed due to Hurricane Isaac.”
The option of extending a Friday was also discussed but was shot down due to scheduling conflicts between classes, according to Schwartz.
“The schedule’s very difficult because Friday classes meet, and if we were to schedule a Wednesday class during a Friday or make Friday into a Wednesday, there would be several classes that would conflict,” said Schwartz.
However, some teachers have taken matters into their own hands, cramming a large amount of information missed into their normal class periods.
“It depends on your standards. If a teacher has high standards, they’ll probably be on top of these assignments, making sure that they get this work out to their students,” said Schwartz. “For those who may not have as high of standards, they may just have some other way of going about it. But there are other teachers that I know of that are already incorporating more material during the class time. They’re just moving more quickly to make up for the time missed.”

Southeastern students haven’t been able to enjoy fall break very often since its inception in 2006, a memory hazily recalled by Schwartz.
“This seems to happen almost every year,” Schwartz said. “We started having the fall break the year of Katrina, which was 2006, and almost every year it seems that fall break was canceled except once.”
The make-up time period for classes needing the extra time will be determined by the faculty member.