Since 1986, however, when the Friday before Homecoming ceased to be a day off, teachers have had the option of holding classes that day. While some professors choose to move their Friday classes to X-periods, many others still hold class on Friday, much to the dismay of some students.
"Teachers are going to have class. Kids are going to go out anyway because kids who don't have class are going to go out," Jon Carty '10 said. "[The] next morning, it's not going to be worth holding a class and discussing something that involves pertinent information because people are going to skip. Why waste an hour of the professors' time?"
Others feel that classes should be canceled on Friday in honor of the football game, the bonfire and the other events associated with Homecoming.
"I don't find it offensive [to have classes on Friday] because academics come first in a school like Dartmouth. I do wish they would [cancel classes], just so we had a better showing for Homecoming activities," Carroll Papajohn '10, a member of the football team, said.
Some professors, many of whom teach large lecture-style classes or ones without mandatory attendance policies, have learned from experience that trying to hold classes on Friday is often not worth their time.
"I don't normally hold classes on Homecoming, Winter Carnival or before the Green Key weekend. I don't offer classes then because I recognize that my students will be distracted, and I have the benefit of using an X-hour that week, when you know I will have their undistracted attention," history professor Joseph Cullon said. "My experience has been [that] in holding class my first term here and having five people in a class of 33 show up, attendance will be low that day. And because Dartmouth gives us the flexibility in scheduling because of the X-hour system, I thought it best to take advantage of that."
Unlike Cullon, some professors feel classes should be held this Friday as they would be during any other week. English professor Martin Favor asserts that since none of the current Dartmouth students have ever known this as a day exempt from classes, the day should go on as planned. He also finds that moving classes to X-hours is inconvenient and insufficient since they are not as long as normal class periods.
Favor is not only holding class on Friday, but also assigned a paper due that day in his English first-year seminar. He finds this acceptable since Friday should be considered a typical school day.
"Why shouldn't I assign papers on any given day that's an actual class day? I mean either you're committed to going to the classes and turning in the papers or you're not," Favor said.
Yet somewhere in between, professors who give students the day off and teachers who think students should be in class are those professors who, when planning their syllabus, are unaware of the celebratory nature of Homecoming.
"Mostly I think people tend to be oblivious to what's going on in students' social lives. So if it's not on some formal calendar ... then when setting up our calendar we often don't even know that it's a day that's special until suddenly no one is in your class that morning," economics professor Patricia Anderson said.
According to Assistant Dean of Faculty Jane Carrol, there is no administrative policy governing whether professors decide to hold classes. She says that the administration leaves it up to the faculty to decide individually what is best for their classes.
"I trust my faculty that they are going to do what is right and expedient for getting the information covered that they need to," Carrol said.
