York profs criticize early reading week

Yuni Kim
Assistant News Editor
“Reading week was way too early and I feel like I accomplished nothing.”
Amber Downing, a first-year York sociology student, said the timing of this year’s fall co-curricular week, or reading week, left students with too much time and too little to do.
“[The school year] was only three weeks in. Now everything is due this week,” said Downing. “If it was held last week or even the week before, that would have been more helpful.”
Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt, associate vice-president of academic learning initiatives, explained that the early reading week was scheduled to offer extra support for first-year students.
“This is when first-year students make transitions into university, and it can be a bit of a jolt,” she said. “I suspect that what works best for first-years doesn’t work for the senior students, but my concern is that if [first-year students] are running into trouble, we’d be coming to their rescue too late.”
According to York history professor Craig Heron, the issue affects not only students, but faculty members as well.
“This subject came up in the Liberal Arts & Professional Studies faculty’s (LA&PS) history department council meeting,” Heron wrote to Excalibur. “Several faculty members expressed concern that the momentum of teaching is broken by a week off after only four weeks of classes.”
During that meeting, a unanimous resolution was passed to request York administration to move the one-week break in classes to a later date in the fall semester. This motion, Heron said, is to be circulated to other LA&PS departments to garner more support for this policy change.
Heron said he brought up the issue at a senate meeting Oct. 28, and explained that many faculty members agreed a later reading week would have been more productive for both students and faculty.
“I asked whether, after two years of the experiment, York’s administration was assessing the usefulness of a break in classes in early October rather than later in the term when it could be of much greater help to students trying to juggle jobs, essays and midterms,” he said.
“I spoke […] more informally to colleagues, and got the unanimous response that the October class break is too early.”
Even though co-curricular week was held relativelt early in the semester, some students, like second- year communications major Crystal Kam, still managed to make good use of the extra time.
“I still did get a few things done, though not as much as I would have liked to,” she said.