This time next week, Bakersfield College will be in the middle of Spring Break.
This vacation was originally designed to be the break in-between the second and third quarters at most four-year universities.
Is a spring break necessary at our community college, when it does not provide a break between different quarters, but instead breaks apart a single semester?
At CSUB, and other schools following the quarter system, the spring and winter holidays are recovery times in between the quarters; a time for students to recover some brain cells that were damaged during the cram sessions for finals. ?While the winter break does provide this service for the break between the fall and spring semesters, there can be no such argument made for spring break.
Some may argue that spring break is a needed remedy for mid-semester fatigue. This argument is easily dismissed when one notices that there is no comparable vacation time during the fall semester.
If this break time was necessary, then the fall semester would also need to be broken apart by a prolonged Thanksgiving break, or something comparable.
Instead of allowing brains to rest, it serves only as a cause for distraction. It causes a lapse in the learning cycle; some students surely have a hard time getting back into the flow of a semester that is still technically in-session.
Spring break could realistically be done away with, while allowing students to finish their spring semester a week early, without having to make up for the interruption and the “rehabilitation” that is needed after returning from it.
It is the opinion of this newspaper’s editorial staff that the spring semester is not inherently more strenuous than the fall. Because of this, the Rip does not see a benefit for the students of BC in breaking apart the semester with an unnecessary vacation.