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Pam Hogan responds:

The Handbook states that we observe, “December 24 (unless otherwise indicated) and Christmas Day as well as December 31 (unless otherwise indicated) and New Year’s Day.

Each year, HR reviews with the leaders of the Academic and Student Affairs areas what activities will be taking place and how the term dates fall within the weeks of the holidays.  The holidays are selected based on how we can best serve our students.  The schedule of proposed holidays is then approved by Sr. Leadership before it is considered ‘final’.   It can be noted that when we have conducted employee polls in the past most preferred time off before the holidays to get prepared over having any days following the holiday. 

For those that chose to take extra time off, many have been able to do that by requesting additional time off through their supervisor using their generous vacation or personal time earned.  As you know, each year the days fall differently (sometimes on a weekend) and in that case, we have occasionally designated the day following and the Friday prior.  Again, it depends on how the dates fall with the academic calendar taken into consideration.

I hope this helps clarify the process.

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If you are on campus during the week between Christmas and New Years you’ll quicky see that many people use personal or vacation days.  Doing so does require prior approval as do serve students during that week.  The time we closed for a week really did impair our ability to welcome and process international students, for example.

Hope that helps.