Each college has taken a different approach when it comes to how they dealt with the coronavirus. To many institutions, this has meant taking away spring break. Instead, they sprinkled mental health days throughout the semester.
While the spring break was taken away to prevent students from traveling, it has a couple of negative side effects.
Many students ended up traveling anyway. Air travel has still spiked, even with so many schools taking away the break. Students just bring their laptop along with them so they can still complete coursework. While air travel still isn’t where it was at this time last year, the number of travelers has greatly spiked, according to TSA.
Taking away spring breaks didn’t stop all travel. Another way that this method failed is by draining students.
Having a few mental health days sprinkled throughout the semester is not enough. At some colleges, individual professors choose when the mental health day is, making the method even less effective than it already is.
My sister attends Saint Norbert College, which chose this route. While taking away spring break made the semester shorter, it also meant compacting everything to be learned in a shorter period of time.
“Every student and teacher I know is overwhelmed…we never get a break so everyone’s mental health is not doing so well,” she said.
Especially after midterms, students need a mental break to recover.
Even if not for the mental health aspect of it, spring break is a time where students can take care of real life issues that need to be taken care of. This can be things like doctor’s appointments or working more than usual.
Just taking away spring break at colleges was not the right move to make.
In the future, there are other routes that should be considered before making that decision. Some colleges offered students money to stay home, or gave stay-cation ideas. Those options should be considered in order to best benefit students all around.