By Jen WiecznerThe Daily Northwestern
Students counting on Reading Week to be a full week between classes and finals will be disappointed Winter Quarter.
Weinberg’s Reading Week will be only four days long, including a weekend, to adjust for class cancellations on Martin Luther King Day.
“Before classes were suspended for Martin Luther King Day, the reading period for winter 2007 gave students exactly nine weeks of class, with no days left over,” said Mary Finn, associate dean for undergraduate academic affairs in Weinberg.
“When the president and provost cancelled classes on Jan. 15, this meant the quarter was one day short of nine weeks,” she said. “Weinberg is obliged, therefore, to reduce the reading period by one day in order to rectify this shortage.”
Winter Quarter classes do not begin until Wednesday, Jan. 3, so Reading Week was originally scheduled to begin Wednesday, March 7. It will now begin Thursday, March 8. Exams will still begin Monday, March 12.
When Reading Week was created in 1969, Weinberg faculty stipulated its length would be determined by the number of calendar days between the first day of classes and the first day of final exams.
Reading Week could only be a full week if there were 10 weeks or more of classes. If there were fewer than 10 weeks, the period would be adjusted to allow for nine weeks of classes, allowing for a reading period of at least four days.
Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education Ronald Braeutigam said Reading Week policy has not changed since it was made, and the length of the period has occasionally been altered in the past to adhere to it.
“There may be some confusion because students think it’s shortening Reading Week by three days, but that’s not the case at all,” he said. “It’s only one day.”
Reading Week was six days last winter and spring.
Because classes extend into the week before finals week, Dance Marathon, which is March 2 to 4, will fall during classes.
Executive co-chairwoman Nadia Rawls, a Weinberg senior, said this also happened last year. Non-Weinberg students who don’t have a Reading Week always have classes following Dance Marathon.
Dance Marathon organizers are trying to create study groups to meet before the event so anyone who wants to can participate.
Braeutigam said the change in Reading Week is just a consequence of the change in class schedule.
“There were basically no degrees of freedom,” he said. “There’s not a whole bunch of value judgment going on here.”
Associated Student Government Academic Vice President Jordan Fox said she was surprised to hear of the change and that ASG had no part in it.
“We didn’t even know there was a consideration of shortening Reading Week,” Fox said. “It would just have been my wish that we would have in some way been involved in discussion about it.”
But once classes were cancelled on Jan. 15, Finn said there was no need for discussion about the reading period. The online class schedule did not initially reflect the change, but Finn said the registrar is updating it.
“There was no decision,” Finn said. “It’s a policy that’s being followed.”
Fox, a Communication senior who had pushed for classes to be cancelled on Martin Luther King Day so students could attend memorial programming, said she hoped students would realize that the reading period is short not only because of that but also because winter classes start late.
Reach Jen Wieczner at [email protected].
