For some, the Last Day of Classes may not be.
Thursday, April 23-the day after the scheduled last day of class-will serve as the official make-up day for classes cancelled this past Monday due to inclement weather, Steve Nowicki, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, announced Wednesday.
The University will operate on a normal Monday schedule April 23, but the decision to hold class will depend on the discretion of individual professors, Nowicki added. Professors were encouraged to notify students of their decision early so that they could plan ahead.
"We've done this before in terms of cancelled classes and it has worked out," he said. "The situation we're in is that we can't just cancel a day of class and not make it up."
Nowicki said he immediately began conferring with the deans of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, the Pratt School of Engineering and the Nicholas School of the Environment after classes were canceled Monday to decide on a make-up day, and quickly settled on April 23 as the best choice. An e-mail was sent out to Duke faculty and a press release posted on Duke Today's Web site to announce the decision Wednesday.
LDOC Committee Chair Merri Estren, a senior, confirmed LDOC festivities will still take place as planned April 22 because the bands have been booked.
"I think the main point of concern will be that if classes are going to be on the 23rd, the administration will not want people going absolutely insane on the 22nd, which is normally what happens," she said. "But I don't think it's going to be a problem because concerts always end at 11 p.m. and that's early for Duke students."
Nowicki said he believes it is possible for students to partake in the LDOC celebration and still make it to class the next day if their professor required it.
Since LDOC will be green-themed this year, Estren said having classes the next day might help drive the environmental message home. She said students getting up early for their classes will see the damage done to campus-something many usually do not take note of as a result of getting up late the day after LDOC when the campus has already been cleaned.
Several students, however, said they did not think many people would go to class April 23 and expressed displeasure at the decision.
"LDOC stands for Last Day of Classes, not second-to-Last Day of Classes," junior Zach White said. "No one's going to attend class. There will be less than 20 percent of students going to class [the next] day, guaranteed."
Other options for the make-up day included cutting Spring Break short or having class on a Saturday, but Nowicki noted that both choices were problematic because they would coincide with student and faculty's vacation and weekend plans. He added that April 23 was an ideal choice because it just cut into a long reading period.
Some students said they wished the administration would have taken more heed of the circumstances surrounding LDOC when they made their decision.
"This defeats the purpose of LDOC completely. They need to realize that people get wasted on LDOC so they will be really hung over the next day," sophomore Hannah Kay said.
Junior Joseph Connor said that although he did not support the decision, he was not too worried about going to class April 23.
"I don't think most professors will have class because most of them don't even expect that much on LDOC," he said.
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