By Esther Nahon, Opinions Editor
“Anyone ubering to LGA tonight, anytime between 3 and 4 AM?”
I shook my head as this message lit up on my screen last Thursday night, wondering why a student would be taking a flight at such an inconvenient time. Unfortunately, red-eyes are all-too-common at Stern.
There’s no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Stern College students, and students from YU as a whole, are from the tri-state area. Logically speaking, though, that means that the rest of the students are simply not from such areas. True, some may live a few states and others a few oceans away, but far or near, we all bear the same title: the out-of-towners.
Though we may stand out socially and bring diversity to the school, it doesn’t come at an easy cost. The days that should bring us joy and excitement actually tend to be the ones that stress us out the most: travel days.
Unusually so, the undergraduate Stern College for Women calendar has chosen to designate Fridays as no-class travel days for the 2023-2024 academic year. This has posed a tremendous challenge to the out-of-town and international community in terms of traveling home to their families for seasonal breaks and religious holidays. Many of these students must endure long flights ranging anywhere from three to even 18 hours in order to go home for holidays and vacations. When factoring in the time it takes to pack and commute to and from the airport, boarding such a flight becomes nearly impossible before Shabbat. “I have to fly across the country on these travel days which is so difficult,” one anonymous Stern student shared. “I live in Seattle which is a 5-6 hour flight and is impossible to do on a winter Friday.”
One of the largest resulting struggles students face is being forced to miss class. Left with no other choice, many students must begin their journey home on the Thursday preceding travel day, during which classes meet as usual. This obviously poses additional academic stress on out-of-town students as they must catch up and make up the work they’ve missed on their own time due to circumstances that are beyond their control. “Labs are especially difficult to plan around,” one out-of-towner noted. Many science courses at SCW require a co-requisite lab credit which takes place once a week. Per the syllabi of the different science departments, two or more lab absences may result in failure of the lab credit, posing a large issue for students enrolled in Thursday lab slots. Not only must they constantly explain absences to their professors, but they need to consequently find time to join another lab section in order to conduct and collect data from the experiments they’ve missed. Such work is extremely time-consuming, difficult to complete independently, and usually comes at the cost of missing yet another lecture, fueling a never-ending cycle of class catch-up.
In addition, this often creates an inconvenience for the university’s professors as well in terms of attendance, scheduling, grading, and providing virtual options. One anonymous Stern student shared, “Everytime I go home to Argentina, I end up missing classes and sometimes teachers are not so understanding and don’t want to provide a zoom option even though I have no other choice.”
Another anonymous international student shared that she always ends up missing her Thursday classes in order to catch her 18-hour flight home to Uruguay. She thinks that though her “professors are usually very understanding, the University should also be understanding of the people who are out-of-towners and take more than 10 hours to go back home.”
Being confined to a singular travel day also poses a financial burden to the university’s out-of-towners as they are limited to purchasing airline tickets available during the wee hours of Thursday night and Friday morning. A Venezuelan student shared that she must take a minimum of two flights in order to get home and that there is only one connection flight a day that provides this option for her. “The entire thing ends up being a costly 15-hour ordeal and it’s not like I have many options to choose from,” she says. Having had to miss multiple days of school in order to travel, she feels as though “no one understands or is looking out for [her].”
Students have voiced their frustration with this inconvenient system, especially due to the fact that it is being mandated by an Orthodox Jewish school. “You would think that Yeshiva University wouldn’t make a travel day on Fridays,” said a student from Argentina. Another student from Canada shared similar frustrations in returning to school the day after Purim. “Last year I had to miss my family mishte,” she said. The lack of consideration and reasonably adequate travel time Yeshiva University grants out-of-towners actually caused her to lose out on performing the mitzvah of Purim.
Of course, putting these unfortunate and inconvenient scenarios into perspective is not so easy, as I do recognize how fortunate I am to be given days off for the respective Jewish holidays in the first place. With that being said, this calendar system has put us in a difficult position as we are forced to choose between our education, academics, families, and religion. I know that I and many others decided to attend Yeshiva University specifically because of the accommodating calendar schedule which would not force us to sacrifice our religious traditions for our academics. However, given this poorly planned system, it seems as though only in-towners get to truly feel and experience this privilege while out-of-towners must still decide whether to prioritize critical class material or holidays with family.
Additionally, there have been many instances during the 2023-2024 academic year in which classes resumed on a Thursday. Myself and many other students have had trouble understanding the logic behind this decision, as the majority of YU/Stern students do not have classes on Fridays. Beyond the silly-sounding nature of boarding trans-atlantic flights for one day of classes, I can say that as an out-of-towner, it feels as though I am being robbed of potential precious family time at home. Though it may not seem like much, homesickness is something that really catches up with out-of-towners, especially during the long stretches of the semester. To us, spending an extra four days–an extra Shabbat– in our hometowns, surrounded by our loved ones makes all the difference in our attitude and outlook as we return to campus to conquer the next chunk of the semester.
Yeshiva University prides itself on its diverse student population and welcomes Jewish students from all sorts of cultural backgrounds. Yet, it is these unique students who end up paying for this prestigious status, both literally and figuratively. Though we are exceptionally lucky to attend a Jewish institution that inherently recognizes and respects our religious holidays in addition to seasonal breaks, it should just as well respect and consider all of its students so that all are given fair and equal abilities to celebrate and enjoy this experience. Despite the fact that out-of-towners make up a minority, we are a crucial part of the YU community, and deserve the same rights and privileges as everyone else.. As such, we shouldn’t be put at a disadvantage just because, as one student put it, “we can’t just take a bus to Teaneck.”