l*****7
发帖数: 8463 | 1 http://www.ocregister.com/articles/winter-599823-jewish-student
UC students protest shorter break due to Rosh Hashana
Seven UC campuses will have a two weeks off instead of three.
BY SCOTT MARTINDALE AND MARK MUCKENFUSS / STAFF WRITERS
Published: Jan. 31, 2014 Updated: Feb. 3, 2014 9:27 a.m.
UC students protest shorter break due to Rosh Hashana
Print Photo
Email This Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share on moreShare
Pin It
1 of 2
More Galleries
ADVERTISEMENT
A worshipper at Chabad of Irvine reads from his prayer book during Rosh
Hashana, the Jewish New Year, in 2010. UC students' next winter break has
been shortened by a week to accommodate Rosh Hashana, frustrating many
students.
FILE PHOTO: PAUL RODRIGUEZ, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Related article »
University of California students are legendary for their vociferous
activism on social and political issues – the Vietnam War-era draft, campus
free-speech rights, immigration reform, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Now they’re protesting a cause of a different kind – their winter vacation.
In an online petition that has received more than 28,000 signatures, UC
students have called on the university to restore a week to their 2014-15
winter break.
The seven UC campuses on the quarter system plan to delay the start of the
fall 2014 term until Oct. 2 to accommodate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year
. Consequently, winter break will be reduced to two weeks from the typical
three.
“For them to cut it off is not right,” said UC Riverside sociology major
Nina Avetisyan, 18, an Orthodox Christian from Los Angeles. “Our Christmas
doesn’t start until Jan. 6.”
UC students who signed the petition on Change.org have cited a litany of
reasons, chief among them that a public university should not favor any
religion when setting its academic calendar.
Jewish students make up about 5 percent of UC Riverside’s undergraduate
population and about 3 percent of UC Irvine’s, according to the Jewish
group Hillel.
Student petitioners also say they depend on their three-week break to
mentally decompress and earn extra money at part-time jobs. International
students have emphasized they need all three weeks to travel home and visit
family.
“Winter break is the only break some of us have to spend with our family,”
one petition signer wrote. “Let’s be fair with everyone, not just a
certain culture or religion.”
UC spokeswoman Brooke Converse said the seven UC campuses shifted their
academic calendar to comply with a UC policy that urges officials to avoid
scheduling “community-wide social and orientation activities” that
conflict with religious holidays.
If UC hadn’t shifted its academic calendar, Rosh Hashana would have fallen
during welcome week’s orientation activities. The Jewish New Year is
observed Sept. 24-26 this year.
“Many of those events are so large, they cannot be rescheduled,” Converse
said.
The 2014-15 academic calendar was approved five years ago, in 2009, and UC
officials have no plans to revise it, Converse added.
Jewish student leaders said they appreciated the sensitivity of UC officials
to their faith, but emphasized they hadn’t lobbied for the change.
“Everyone wants to keep their break – I can empathize with that,” said
fourth-year computer-science student Yarden Eisenberg, 22, president of
Hillel at UC Irvine. “But it’s different when it’s a religious or ethnic
group. It should at least make you reconsider.”
UC Irvine student Daniel Narvy, president of Anteaters for Israel, said the
calendar dust-up was a distraction from real issues, especially long-
standing campus tensions between Jewish and Muslim students.
“It’s not like a Jewish student can’t go to school for two weeks,” said
Narvy, 20, a third-year political science major. “There are a lot more
pressing issues facing the Jewish community, like the recent waves of anti-
Israel sentiment – it’s not only demoralizing for us, it’s very
disconcerting.”
UC Berkeley and UC Merced, the only undergraduate campuses on the semester
system, adjusted their academic calendars in 2009 to avoid overlap with the
Muslim holiday of Ramadan.
And UC’s seven quarter-system campuses in 2009 tweaked their calendars to
avoid overlapping with both Rosh Hashana and the Muslim holiday of Eid al-
Fitr, officials said.
Jewish and Muslim calendars are based on the lunar calendar, causing holiday
dates to shift each year. | l*****i
发帖数: 20533 | |
|
