While thousands of Americans took advantage of Labor Day as a last gasp of summer, several alumni braved the gloomy morning on their day off to take a stand against classes on federal holidays at their alma mater.
While thousands of Americans took advantage of Labor Day as a last gasp of summer, several alumni braved the gloomy morning on their day off to take a stand against classes on federal holidays at their alma mater.
Through wind, rain and crowds of students who went to class anyway, recent Duke alumni Alex Ford, David Laughlin, Ryan Shelton, Paige Katzfey and Emily Ballard returned to campus Monday morning to protest the injustice of holding classes on Labor Day and other federal holidays. The small contingent collected 401 signatures for a petition with a simply-stated message: No school on Labor Day!
“I went to school on a lot of federal holidays when I was at Duke, and I don’t think that’s right,” Ford said.
With their message scrawled across the cover of a hot-pink notebook, the protesters approached students and professors on their way to class and people leaving services in the Chapel.
Ford described most students—and bus drivers—as receptive to the petition.
“I just signed it because I saw a poster,” junior Katelin Sensibaugh said. “It’s tough for me talking to friends who go to different universities who have this day off, and even my teachers whose classes I had today didn’t want to be here.”
Some professors did choose to stay home. Ford said one petitioner, who is taking Digital Textuality with assistant professor of English Matt Cohen, reported that Cohen canceled his Monday class meeting because “he believed in Labor Day.”
The holiday, officially designated by the U.S. Congress in 1894, pays tribute to America’s labor force as the basis of American prosperity.
Among the hundreds of legitimate and dubious signatories were former Duke basketball star Luol Deng, Mexican agrarian reform revolutionary Emiliano Zapata and a mysterious individual named Romeo Santana.
Although Ford pinpointed the University administration as the petition’s target, none of the protesters communicated with anyone from the administration. “We’re busy people and we have work tomorrow,” he said. Ford, a Platooner in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne, came to Durham from Fort Bragg, N.C., to celebrate Labor Day weekend.
Several top administrators could not be reached for comment due to the Labor Day holiday.
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