During the summer, Brown students disperse across the globe, interning throughout the country, traveling abroad, working fun summer jobs or spending some much-needed time at home with family. It's a time for self-development, exploration, saving money or just plain rest.
Winter break, though, is rarely as meaningful.
The month-long winter break affords Brown students little opportunity to learn something new. The break is too short to get a meaningful job or internship, and too long to pretend our parents aren't driving us a little nuts. And this is nothing new - for certainly as long as we've been here, students have had to wrangle with a surprisingly long break.
January at Brown, a 10-day winter session that offers small classes to students who are willing to shell out several hundred dollars, seemed like a good idea at first. But as we near the end of its three-year pilot, it seems that the J-term has never realized its potential - as reflected in student interest. Last year, only 25 students participated and the year before that 19 did.
The program's failure to take off among students after two years could be the result of a sort of catch-22 - no one would participate in J-term unless they knew there would be a large number of other students enrolled, but that number could never increase enough to generate more interest because so few students wanted to be guinea pigs.
So administrators' warnings that J-term might not continue can't be seen as good news, but they aren't really surprising either. And assuming that no one expects a surge in interest this year (with at least 50 students needed to make the program solvent), ending J-term might be the most sensible choice. A debt-laden University shouldn't continue to subsidize a program that is benefitting so few students.
The program needs to be retooled, re-envisioned and resold to students. Allowing half-credit courses might entice more potential participants, especially those in danger of going on academic probation. The program would probably then have to be lengthened, or it could be tied to academic internships or other experiential learning that continues during the semester - or even during spring break.
But administrators shouldn't waste time jumping through hoops to create the credit option that might save J-term. It needs significant changes, and those changes probably won't be made in the next few months.
It seems that a winter session could be successful if it were meatier or more interesting. But Brown's current J-term model - which started out as a timid pilot program, and hasn't changed much - doesn't seem like it can succeed.
