Though they will no longer be freshmen, it looks like this year’s crop of Directed Studies students definitely will have an opportunity to show up at Naples on Thursday nights.

Plans that possibly would have extended the interdisciplinary freshman western civilization program to a second year are on hold for at least one year.

“The project will be picked up again next year,” humanities director of undergraduate studies Norma Thompson wrote in an e-mail.

Thompson said there were no meetings this semester about the plan because principal parties were on leave and because there was not enough time to implement the plan for next year.

“Meanwhile the individuals involved continue to collect suggestions and write down ideas that might be explored more fully later,” Thompson added.

When it began in 1946, Directed Studies was a two-year program, but presently the program lasts only one year. Freshmen take three full-year classes on Western culture: philosophy, literature, and history and politics.

Possible proposals would have created some sort of second year program, which would have been likely optional and on a smaller scale than the first year of Directed Studies.

The program in its current incarnation is renowned for, among other things, the weekly paper that largely keeps students working Thursday nights.