Make Up Days for What?

Southern University has decided to have make-up days after all due to Hurricane Ida, but there is one question—why? Hurricane Ida has come and gone, but it’s not fair to make us students pay the price for something we can’t control. The dates the university have decided on is Fall Break, which is October 4th-5th, away games October 9th and October 16th, and two home games, October 30th and November 6th. Out of these days, us as a student body must make up five of them.
When I received the email of the makeup days, I was shocked. I was also disappointed because I felt like we as students have already been through a lot and were doing a great job balancing our work and social life. Five days of school and waking up in the morning is not easy, but when we make it to the end of the week, we are tired and need to relax. However, if our break is taken away from us, and we can’t even enjoy game days because of class, then how are we supposed to enjoy our college experience?
Louisiana is along the gulf coast, so we should already expect hurricanes. Hurricane Ida was a bad hurricane, but our campus was not even affected that bad, yet we are paying the price. We did miss a week, but this could not come at a worse time. The first problem is that midterms are right around the corner, so we need to be rested up for that. We want to go support our football team and have fun, but if we take away games as make-up days and home games, we won’t be able to support as much.
I believe it is unfair to not only myself, but to the whole student body that we should be penalized for something out of our control. Other universities such as Dillard, Xavier, and Southeastern are just making it back on campus and they must make up days, but that is reasonable because they were out for almost a whole month. The big issue I have is that school is already exhausting, but that weekend is used to replenish not be stressed out with more work. Our football team has a game against Texas Southern next week and they need our support, but we can’t go if we have class. There must be a point in time where we need to just take a hit if it is manageable.
Being a college student is not easy, but there are things we need to get us through such as a weekend, breaks, and fun events. The goal should be not to put more stress on students and that is not being met if we are taking away days from the students to relax their minds.