This summer, a faculty group from Chico State was forced to choose three university-wide closure days, during which the entire campus will shut down.
When faculty planned a four-day weekend during Labor Day holiday, they thought students would take advantage of the extended time off and go home.
“I think that tactic may work for freshmen, but for anyone that has their own place to stay, I think people will be coming to town rather than going out,” said senior Jason Gordon.
Chico State created a furlough implementation team consisting of deans, department chairs, a representative from the president’s office, a representative from faculty governments, a California Faculty Association representative and Leslie Nix-Baker, the vice provost for faculty affairs.
The team had to deal with some regulations while planning the furlough days. There could only be a maximum of two university-wide furlough days per month. However, there could be four days clumped together, Nix-Baker said.
Along with these regulations, the team had to deal with a time crunch.
The California State University system was not informed until July 29 that individual campuses would need to set their own furlough days.
“It was the group’s consensus that these three days, Sept. 8, Oct. 15 and Nov. 2 were the days we thought to be best,” Nix-Baker said.
The team’s reasoning was by extending the holiday weekends, students may take advantage of the extra time off by going home to spend time with their families, she said.
“That’s ridiculous, this weekend is going to be huge,” said senior Chris Bunt. “This is my last Labor Day weekend as a Chico State student and I’m going out with a bang.”
Bunt wasn’t the only one looking forward to the weekend. But some students questioned the timing of the furlough days.
“I love having a five day weekend as much as anyone else,” Gordon said. “But for some reason, when I think of a long Labor Day weekend and a long Halloween weekend, I think the possibility of a couch being lit on fire in the middle of the street goes up substantially.”
The University Police had prepared for the weekend, said Chief of Police Eric Reichel.
“Before we even got the furlough schedule, both Halloween and Labor Day weekend are what we like to ‘call blackout dates,’” Reichel said. “‘Blackout dates’ are days that my officers know not to request time off, because they will not be receiving it."
The University Police was not expecting the furlough Tuesday to be different from any other Tuesday.
“It’s going to be hard if you’re a student with no Friday class to party Thursday night through Tuesday,” Reichel said. “We aren’t expecting Tuesday to be anything particularly busy.”
There were more than the normal number of Chico police officers on the streets Tuesday, but the University Police was staffed as if it was a regular Tuesday.
Kyle Yamamoto can be reached at
kyamamoto@theorion.com
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