The majority of faculty present at the Dec. 4 faculty meeting voted in favor of passing the University Curriculum Committee's proposal to terminate the University Seminar program, which will be replaced with an optional First-year Seminar program in order to lessen the burden of the budget crisis. However, the faculty have not yet reached a decision regarding expanding the Thanksgiving break to include the Wednesday before the holiday.The majority of faculty present also voted in favor of the motion to waive the second reading of the USEM proposal, despite expressing several questions about the changes in the USEM program, such as how the first-year seminars would be offered to make them desirable to incoming students and whether these changes would have ever been made regardless of budget constraints.

Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said that the budget crisis acted as the catalyst for the changes made to the first-year seminar experience.

"It's not like before the budget crisis came along everybody thought USEM was just perfect and had no concerns about it; there were issues. But I think it's also true that had it not been for the budget crisis, those issues probably would not have led to a movement to change the program," he said.

Jaffe said that a number of other colleges have first-year seminar programs optional and that it is considered "an elite opportunity that students compete to get into." He said this would be an ideal situation for the program at Brandeis, but the transition from a system in which the seminar is required to a system in which it is a privilege would be difficult.

"I think one of the ways you do that is [by making students] feel like it is a privilege and not a burden," Jaffe said. Faculty at the meeting suggested that students be required to apply to the seminar rather than just register for it.

Jaffe explained that it will be up to the discretion of individual departments to designate which First-year Seminars will count toward degree requirements within their departments. He said that about 20 seminars will be offered, as opposed to the 50 that are currently offered.

At last week's meeting, Prof. Judith Herzfeld (CHEM) presented the results of her analysis on the calendars for the next 12 school years, which showed that there will only be two years in which it will be difficult to accommodate a plan that would make the Wednesday before Thanksgiving a holiday.

The two years, 2012 and 2018, would be difficult to manage, Herzfeld explained in response to an e-mail from the Justice. In both years, there are only 10 weeks between the Labor Day week and the Thanksgiving week. Labor Day falls early enough that it would difficult to begin classes 11 days before Labor Day instead of four days before. All five of the Jewish holidays that Brandeis observes fall during the week and also leave an extra Friday that cannot be converted into a different "Brandeis day," Herzfeld explained.

The number of weeks between Labor Day and Thanksgiving are relevant because "those weeks define the core number of class days (five per week) to which some are added before Labor Day, during the Thanksgiving week, and after Thanksgiving, and some are removed for the Jewish holidays. In the end we have to get to 65 class days per semester (13 for each day of the week)," Herzfeld wrote.

However, Reinharz said at the meeting that the administration would not be willing to implement a plan that would not include the two anomaly years. Herzfeld explained in her e-mail, "The administration wants consistency in a calendar that is inherently inconsistent and it is difficult to ask faculty to consistently teach on Labor Day (a family day and a national observance that is still of significance to many) when that has no bearing on giving off the day before Thanksgiving in 10 years out of 12. So there is still work to be done."

"The administration has not taken a position, but rather raised the question of how we would deal with these years, asking the faculty to consider the issue more fully," Reinharz wrote in an e-mail to the Justice. "In the light of the cost of a college education and the strain this places on families, plus the shrinking job market nationally, students and families are seeking value, and this includes more, rather than less, time spent in class," he wrote.