Last Tuesday, the San Diego State University Senate met and voted in favor of the initiative that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving be a holiday for the 2014 and 2015 fall semesters.

Director of SDSU’s School of Communication and senate member William Snavely brought up the amendment during the vote for approving the academic calendar for the next two years.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Snavely said.

He said students who have evening classes the day before Thanksgiving have a difficult time making decisions on what to do for the holiday.

“It makes it absolutely impossible for any student who lives outside of the city to be able to get home for Thanksgiving,” Snavely said. “I think that’s inappropriate.”

Rhetoric and writing studies professor and senate member Cezar Ornatowski voted against the amendment.

“It was not so much that I voted for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to not be a holiday,” said Ornatowski. “I was voting to leave things as they are.”

He said instructors should be able to consult with their students to come up with an “intelligent decision” to take the Wednesday off or not.

“The next conversation will be that students don’t show up on Monday and Tuesday,” Ornatowski said, referring to the week of Thanksgiving.

“I just don’t think that is a serious argument,” Snavely said in response to Ornatowski’s argument.

He said if students already needed the whole week off, they would take it off anyway.

Another issue with the new amendment is that the campus will have to add another day of classes to make up for the Wednesday holiday.

“There is no other day unless we encroach on another holiday,” Ornatowski said. “Nobody wants that.”

The senate-approved amendment will now go to SDSU President Elliot Hirshman for approval, University Senate Chair William Eadie said.

Hirshman will likely approve this, Eadie said, because the university is looking to getting the calendar done as soon as possible for planning purposes.

Photo by Jonathan Bonpua, Staff Photographer