The fate of the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day will not be determined until the May 3 faculty meeting.
At this meeting, the Yale College Calendar Committee will present new proposals for ways that Yale can cancel Monday classes in celebration of the holiday while still having a full 13 weeks of classes in the spring semester.
At an April meeting, the faculty rejected the original proposal to give faculty and students the day off and sent the Calendar Committee back to the drawing board.
That plan would have rescheduled the Monday classes for the Friday preceding the holiday, but faculty said this approach would be unfair to language classes and others that meet on Fridays.
Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske, a Calendar Committee member, said he expects the matter will be settled at the May faculty meeting.
“The Teaching and Learning Committee discussed the matter but didn’t come up with additional ways to compensate for a day lost to a MLK Day holiday,” Meeske said. “The Calendar Committee will discuss it later this week. Then we will present options to the faculty at the meeting. Hopefully we will settle it one way or another at that point.”
Both the faculty and the Officers of the University need to approve changes for them to take effect.
Students began campaigning for the cancellation of classes this year, holding a rally with about 250 people and planning a full day of activities on MLK Day. This year was the first year that non-essential Yale employees had the day off for the holiday.