The student-wide poll for a fall break at Carleton has had the highest number of respondents the university has ever seen in any of its election polls or referendums, according to Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) president Alexander Golovko.
As of Oct. 17, the poll has had more than 7,500 respondents. The results will be announced Oct. 22.
“With the fall break poll, A Better Carleton is delivering on its promise to re-open the debate on this question by asking students first-hand whether this is something that they care for,” Golovko said.
If the majority of students vote for a fall break, then a motion will be drafted and presented to the university Senate before the end of 2012, Golovko said.
Should the motion pass, the break would take place from Thanksgiving Monday until the Friday of that week in 2013.
To accommodate the break, additional exam times would be added to Sundays, according to the poll, and in some years, the space between the last day of classes until the beginning of exams would be shortened to one day from the current two-day study period.
In some years, the September orientation period would be shortened by one day as well, and exams could continue until Dec. 23 depending on the year
At Ryerson University in Toronto, a fall break was introduced this year following a student vote. However, the break did not apply to Ryerson engineering students, due to in-class hours required for their program.
CUSA took the concerns of engineering students very seriously, Golovko said, and worked with the Faculty of Engineering and Design to ensure they would be able to benefit from the reading week as well.
“We went into [this poll] with the hope of being able to accommodate all students at once as opposed to leaving certain students out of it, and so the engineering students have been accommodated in the same way as other students,” Golovko said.
Golovko also said that he attended a meeting with the Carleton Student Engineering Society where he fielded questions from students.
While this poll has certainly received the most number of respondents, it is certainly not the first time the possibility of a fall break has been proposed.
In 2007, the CUSA executive put forward a motion for a fall break. Students voted overwhelmingly in favour, yet the move failed to result in a break.
This year, Golovko said he and the executive focused on putting a motion before the university Senate before the end of 2012, when the academic calendar is finalized.
The problem with previous fall break attempts, like in 2007, was that the referendum coincided with CUSA elections. Changes in the academic calendar must be finalized before the end of the calendar year.
The administration also lent a hand to CUSA by allowing the poll question to be issued via students’ Carleton email accounts.
“The administration support has been outstanding, they’ve provided us with all the resources and support that we required and that we needed,” Golovko said.
While it remains unclear if the university or CUSA business will take a financial hit from the implementation of the break, Golovko said he’s excited by the prospect of a break.
“There’s a number of benefits to having a fall break and hopefully [the administration] votes the way we want them to vote once this motion comes to the senate.”
A member of Carleton’s administration could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.
