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For FLC, first day is Labor Day. Why?

While many families will be spending Labor Day at a barbecue with friends and family, students at Fort Lewis College will instead be walking across campus to their first classes of the fall semester.

For Audrey Smith, a junior at FLC, classes on Labor Day aren’t a big deal.

“I know people who are upset, but it doesn’t affect me,” Smith said. She continued by saying she might use the extra day to sleep and get ready for classes if it were available, but that would be it.

Mitch Davis, public affairs officer for FLC, said that the federal government requires the college to have 14 weeks of classes, plus a week of finals. The first day is based on when commencement should take place and then counting back 15 weeks from that date. Classes usually begin the last two weeks of August, or the first two weeks of September, and this year happened to fall on Labor Day.

“The time students spend in class is defined,” Davis said. “It’s easier to have full weeks (of classes) over half weeks.”

Ray Benton, also a junior at FLC, said even though Labor Day is “a holiday worth celebrating,” the way classes fall provides long summer and Christmas breaks.

Davis also said that with the way classes fall, students from FLC are among the first to finish school in the U.S., providing graduates with a “jump on job searching” over their peers.

Though Benton won’t be “enjoying the beautiful weather by the river” on Labor Day like he had hoped, and Smith won’t be back in her native Maryland for a pool party, neither minds the lack of holiday.

“It’s one more day,” Smith said. “It’s not a big difference.”

Elaine Severson is a student intern entering her junior year at Fort Lewis College.



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