The Academic Senate is debating schedule changes for future Thanksgiving breaks.

At the Nov. 28 meeting, the senate discussed prolonging Thanksgiving break after noticing many students didn’t attend their Wednesday classes before this year’s holiday. Possible options the senators considered were taking the Wednesday off during the week of Thanksgiving or taking the whole week off as a “Fall Break.”

“From a student point of view, especially if you’re flying, it’s brutal,” said senator Jan Schultz, earth and planetary sciences professor. “They feel completely torn between being in class and being with their families. Why are we doing this?”

If the whole week were a holiday, the college would compensate by starting the semester a week earlier or ending a week later.

Some members of the senate felt the change would be drastic and wanted to leave the schedule how it is, with just Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving week as days off.

Academic senator Kathy O’Connor, department chair of physical education and health education, said City College’s school year begins August 26 to line up with the schedules of the local school district.

“What we’re doing is [we’re] saying ‘Screw that, we don’t care anymore because we want a week off,’” she said to her fellow senators. “Where do we add the extra days? We don’t have any open days.”

Student Senate representative Justin Perocco agrees with taking the week off.

“A lot of other students I know will just skip class Wednesday,” he said.

City College students echoed the sentiment for a prolonged Thanksgiving vacation.

Adam Stumle, 22-year old theatre arts major said, “Wednesday is pretty worthless.”

The senate ultimately decided this was too complicated an issue to vote on without discussing further with more input from faculty and students. They agreed to have a broader debate at their scheduled Dec. 5 meeting.