Thanksgiving may be the busiest travel time of the year, but many Brunonians won't be contributing to that rush. Students who live a plane flight away often have a hard time making it home over the short recess, plagued with steep plane fares.
"Thanksgiving is always a lot more expensive than winter break, and it's been that way for the past four years," said Amy Baxter '08.
Baxter, who lives in California, usually buys her tickets for Thanksgiving in September. This year, she had to change her flight time after she booked her tickets, and she ended up paying $200 more for her flight.
"I don't think it's ever a problem of not being able to get tickets," she said. "It just gets really expensive."
Travel gets so costly, in fact, that many people avoid going home altogether.
"Last year and the year before I didn't go home because it was too expensive," said Hope Hardesty '08.
For many students, this means staying closer to Brown.
"My solution each year has been to stay on the East Coast," said California native Phillip Burns '08.
A number of West Coast upperclassmen have made similar plans. "I have not traveled home for Thanksgiving since my freshman year," said Alexander Cerjan '09, another Californian. "I find that the trip is too long, and I have to book tickets too early for me to have security in not having a midterm or project that I would miss by trying to leave early."
"I'm glad I'm not flying home - when I looked at tickets with my parents a few months ago, they were already $350," said Dana Frankel '08 from Columbus, Ohio.
For many international students, the long trip home is just too much for the Thanksgiving break.
"So far I have gone home to Bombay only once - last winter break," said Sriram Subramanian '10. Arjun Bhartia '08 returns to his home in New Delhi only twice a year, during winter and summer breaks. When he was a first-year, Bhartia went to his roommate's home in Albany, N.Y. The past two years, he has gone to New York, and this year, he will visit a friend in Washington, D.C.
But some international students do journey halfway across the world for the short Thanksgiving break. Purvi Paliwal '08, whose home is also in New Delhi, took an entire week off last year to make the trip. "I wanted to be home with my family," she said. "I could afford to take the time off," she added. This year, however, she won't be returning to India.
It's possible, too, that traveling during Thanksgiving break has not always been this difficult - or expensive. Three years ago, Hardesty, then a first-year, booked a flight home to California the week before Thanksgiving and paid around $450 for a round-trip ticket.
This year, she booked her tickets much earlier - in late September - and ended up paying over $500. And the flight she wound up with takes off from Boston rather than Providence and has two layovers. She will return on a red-eye flight Sunday night. "I think the prices have gone up, and the possibility of getting a cheap flight has gone down," she said.
"There are ways to manipulate the system to get cheaper tickets," she said, the most obvious being booking tickets in advance. Additionally, flights to and from major cities tend to be cheaper than flights to smaller airports.
"Whenever I buy plane tickets, I buy round trip and then change the return date," said Masumi Hayashi-Smith '10 from Tacoma, Wash., who cited inconveniences with travel as one of her reasons for not returning home this Thanksgiving.
