Don’t forget about the importance of O-Week

Re: “University erred in siding against fall reading week,” Oct. 26

I’m a third-year kinesiology student, two-time icebreaker and one of the so-called “obnoxious few” who asked students for their opinions. The Cord claimed that a small group of O-Week volunteers decided for “you,”which is completely false. There are only 600 O-week volunteers, while over 80% per cent of 1,720 students who gave us feedback opposed the proposal. For reference, Kyle Walker was elected Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union
(WLUSU) president with 860 votes.

Every Cord article about reading break has mentioned O-Week as an issue, but nothing else. And yes, part of this was about O-Week. The fact is, O-Week is important for students to be successful. However, there was so much more to the picture that has been neglected. Non-volunteers and athletes lose badly needed income by having to move to Waterloo earlier.

As for Kyle Hocking’s belief that “mental health and academic success” should have been prioritized over midterm logistics? Anyone who thinks that clustering business midterms together as there would be fewer days to write them wouldn’t hurt both mental health and academic success is misguided.

As for the break itself, the editorial argued that it doesn’t matter if students party or do schoolwork, a break will help mental health. However, I’ve found that professors love making assignments due immediately after a break.

With this added break falling on Halloween roughly half the time, any students who don’t work over the break would be more disadvantaged academically than if they did not have the break to start with.

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