West Virginia University students and college students overall look forward to their breaks. We cherish our Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring breaks and are appreciative of the time that we get at home away from the responsibilities of school. We look forward to eating home cooked meals, seeing our families, being in the familiar space of our hometowns and hanging with friends from home or watching endless hours of Netflix. Whatever students choose to do on their breaks doesn’t matter, but the point is that breaks are like the light at the end of a dark tunnel when we are drowning in school work.

As college students, we naturally are running on very little sleep, stressing out about our upcoming assignments and hoping for the next break to come along. It is in our DNA and our blood to be this way as college students. For those of you who do seem to hold it all together, can you help us struggling fellow students out and give us your tips? Especially, now considering WVU students no longer have fall break…yeah you read that right all you non-WVU students. This is our first year here at WVU where we don’t have a fall break here at WVU anymore.

Real tears right now because last year Oct. 12-13 was our fall break, which meant that we had Saturday, October 10, to Tuesday, October, 13, off. This cherished four-day weekend has been in action for the past three years, and with the drop off the ball into the new year of 2016, we not only kissed the new year goodbye but also our fall break.

Why? That’s probably the question going through your mind right now if you’re like me and have no idea why they decided to take our fall break away.

On Monday, June 8, 2015, the WVU Faculty Senate met to vote on the academic calendar for the 2016-2017 school year. The WVU Faculty Senate is a committee of 123 Senators who represent constituencies from the main WVU campus, as well as the Potomac State campus and the WVU Tech campus, according to the Daily Athenaeum (DA).

Two different versions of the academic calendar were presented: one including a fall break and one not including a fall break. Obviously, the calendar without the fall break won the majority of the Senate’s votes.

There was a disconnect between faculty and students in regards to the inclusion of a fall break. Students enjoyed having a fall break and faculty disliked it because they felt that it disrupted learning in the classroom. With two days off, students were losing important instructional time, and many students have decreased levels of motivation after coming back from the four-day weekend. While I can understand that and know how most students feel when they come back from break, many students are very unhappy with not having a break this year, and as a result, have taken to Twitter to post their complaints.

Not only have students taken to Twitter to post their complaints, one student actually put together a petition to bring back fall break. On the petition website, students and other individuals could sign as well as comment reasons as to why they enjoyed fall break.

Ultimately, the petition reached 83 signatures, but potentially the reason the signature number wasn’t higher could be the lack of knowledge about the petition. I know that if I would’ve known about it, I would have signed it in a heartbeat.

Despite the negative feelings toward fall break coming from students, there is uncertainty surrounding the issue of whether a fall break will be included next year or not. Fall break was originally introduced in the 2013-2014 academic calendar as part of a three-year pilot program, and it was never intended to be a permanent part of all the following years’ academic calendars, so next year’s inclusion of fall break is up in the air.

Obviously, students at WVU want, and could potentially need, a fall break to relax, breathe and catch up on any work that they may be behind on. We all get into that mid-semester slump where are find ourselves rundown, unmotivated and wanting to see our families. Regardless of your year here at WVU, the removal of a fall break from this year’s academic calendar was, and still is, a big move. I know this past week may have been hard, and just think, we could’ve been home, but us Mountaineers are in this together. Finish the semester strong, and keep climbing. Keep fighting and who knows, maybe next year fall break will again make an appearance on the academic calendar.