Fall Reading Week plebiscite wins support

Justin Bell

HEARING THE STUDENT VOICE Dehod initiated the plebiscite to learn student opinion on the Fall Reading Week.

The University of Alberta Students' Union has received a motion of confidence to advocate for the implementation of a Fall Reading Week.

The plebiscite question — which proposed starting the semester before Labour Day to account for extra instructional days off during the Remembrance Day long weekend — received a 55 per cent majority in this week's Students' Union elections. The result allows the Students' Union to leverage support as they move forward with their negotiations with the university's administration to institute the Fall Reading Week.

Current SU President Nick Dehod, who has been an active proponent for the fall reading week since his election last year, had mixed feelings about the result.

"I'm happy that we've got a response from students. This actually matches up with the response that we received in the [undergraduate] student survey data. It's clear that this is something that students want. But it also gives us the sense that we need to look into it a little bit more," Dehod said.

The first-semester reading week still has plenty of hurdles to overcome before it can be implemented on campus. With only a 15.8 percent voter turnout in the election and a narrow victory in the plebiscite, the opportunity for the Students' Union to use the support to expedite negotiations with the administration has taken a hit.

Dehod also admitted that the narrow margin of victory may highlight the complicated nature of implementing the break. Issues surrounding loss of summer incomes and complications surrounding student housing are concerns that will need to be addressed as the SU continues its investigation into the possibility of a Fall Reading Week.

"If we can't deal with the concerns that have been raised, we are going to have to look at some other options. That will be a little bit longer of a conversation. What's important to keep in mind is that in other institutions, this conversation has taken 10 years," Dehod said.

But Dehod, whose term as President ends in a few months, remains optimistic that the reading week will become instituted on campus in the future. With an incoming executive that seems interested in the idea, Dehod said that the plebiscite's data will go a long way to developing a reading week.

"If you look at the platforms of Rory Tighe and Vice President (Academic) Emerson Csorba, they are both really interested in pursuing the Fall Reading Week. We know that this is something that students want. I think that we have enough data that they can move forward and have more conversations about it. I'm hoping that with this information, we can start looking at other options with the university so that we can have an answer for students in the next couple years."

Mirroring the sentiments of Dehod, SU President-elect Rory Tighe said that, based on the positive results of the plebiscite, he'll continue to fine-tune the Fall Reading Week idea while lobbying the university administration so that the reading week can come to fruition.

"It's something that students are really interested in pursuing based on […] the results that we got, so it'll be really interesting to look at how we can best pursue this," Tighe said. "I think 55 per cent is a result where students are in favour of this, but they're not quite sure how they feel about this exact proposal. So it'll be a really good opportunity to look at other proposals on how to make this week happen."