“Students will have one more week to catch up on their reading,” reads the opening to the announcement posted on Ryerson University’s website, informing students of their new fall reading week, which took place during the Thanksgiving weekend.
That is, except for Ryerson’s engineering students.
While their peers took the week off to sleep and find motivation to read, engineering students buckled down and continued with their classes as usual, making them the only group on campus during that time.
Town hall meetings were held with Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Science students to discuss what a break would mean for them, according to the Ryerson’s senate agenda minutes from May 6, 2012.
“In the engineering programs specifically the discussion focused around the two options of either more time in class during the week, or opting out of the break. The general opinion of engineering students favoured not having more hours in class during the week,” the report stated.
Although the decision to opt out was met with frustration from some, there was a valid reason as to why the engineers were made to spend that week in class, president of the Ryerson Engineering Student Society Rose Ghamari said.
“Engineering students aren’t granted a fall reading week because we require 13 weeks of class and lab time in order to remain recognized by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board,” Ghamari said via email. “The reading week would dock the number of weeks down to 12 and this would not be sufficient.”
Ghamari added that despite bring a little disappointed at first, all engineering students understand the situation and the need for them to be in class.
Fizza Rizvi, a first-year chemical engineering student at Ryerson, said she thinks the decision to exclude engineers from the fall break was unfair.
“Engineers have so much work and we need that week to catch up on homework,” Rizvi said. “Any reading week would be good for us, we need a break from the hectic schedule and time to catch up, be it fall or spring.”
Her sentiments were shared by David Grant, a second-year industrial engineering student.
“Other than the obvious fact that it would be nice to have a week off, the extra time to catch up on studies is always needed,” he said.
“In engineering, I’ve really never had a time when I said I have no homework or nothing to do . . . the university was basically a ghost town. It was just really odd to have hardly anyone walking around campus,” said Grant, who is also a member of Ryerson’s men’s hockey team.
“The guys on my team were also rubbing it in everyday at practice —all in good fun though,” he said.
Though students like Rizvi and Grant wish for more breaks, other students like Joseph Lames, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, said they aren’t too disappointed.
“I’m fine with it actually. Engineering courses cover a lot of important subjects. Losing a week means scrambling to cover those remaining topics. Some are much too hard or confusing for that,” Lames said.
One thing all students could agree on was the benefit of having the freed up library space while their peers were off.
The Ryerson Engineering Student Society also tried to lighten the moods of students by hiding a prize around campus to be found, according to Ghamari.
“Clues were given as to the whereabouts of the secret envelope as well as pictures of the deserted room in which it was hidden. Students were then encouraged to take advantage of the emptiness of the campus to find the envelope and get the prize,” Ghamari said.
This story comes as Carleton is voting this week on whether to consider its own fall reading week for 2013.
Carleton’s current proposed reading week would exist for all faculties, including engineering. To ensure that time is not lost for programs like engineering, the schedule is being arranged to ensure no class days are lost.
