I w
ork as a tutor in a college with a widely diverse population. There are immigrants from all over the world – Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and more.
Come All Ye Faithful
We have students who are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, and many who didn’t mention it – or wear symbols of their faith on necklaces.
Merry Christmas
The school closes early on Dec 24 and 25. That’s fine, Christmas is a major holiday, no one wants the Christians to choose between class and family. Especially not so close to finals on Jan 6-12.How would these students find time to make up the work?
Happy New Year
New Years is not technically a religious holiday, but you know what? Not everyone celebrates the New Year in mid-winter. In Asia, the New Year is in the spring. For Jews, it’s in the fall.
Who Is Forcing You to Celebrate, Grinch?
And yet, from Christmas until New Year, school closes at 5:30 instead of 10:30 as it does the rest of the year. This means that a week before finals, a week before term papers are due, there’s no quiet library to study in, there’s no computer with access to the scholarly articles only available if you pay or log into a school computer that has the passwords on the server…
So people
who don’t celebrate
either the
Reason for the Season
or January 1st
are forced to treat it as a special day instead of an ordinary day.
Not very ‘freedom of religion’ if you ask me.
Why do students need a week off when there’s a two week break between semester coming right up?
