The Government of the Student Body will vote Wednesday whether to recommend keeping the current academic calendar.

The resolution, titled “Four Weeks are not Better than Three,” was introduced two weeks ago and states GSB should recommend to ISU President Gregory Geoffroy the current academic calendar be kept.

GSB will follow the Faculty Senate in offering its recommendation to Geoffroy on the academic calendar issue.

The vote will come just before Nov. 14, when final comments and recommendations are due to Geoffroy’s Academic Calendar Task Force. The task force will submit its summary of all comments to Geoffroy, who will decide on the calendar the university will adopt.

Geoffroy is expected to make his decision by mid-December, before winter break.

Calendar A is the current academic calendar. Calendar B would recommend semester breaks be lengthened by one week, classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays be extended by five minutes and classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays be extended by five to 10 minutes. This would make up for the loss of a week of instruction because of lengthened breaks and the implementing of a 10 day “J-term” in January.

Liberal Arts and Sciences Senator Dave Breutzmann, who authored the resolution, said most students he’s talked with have said they prefer the current calendar and believe breaks are long enough.

“Some students and [myself] are also concerned with the loss of academic standards from losing one week of instruction,” Breutzmann said. “The five extra minutes in class doesn’t make up for the loss of a week of lecture topics and labs.”

According to the task force’s Web site, www.iastate.edu/news/ cal/, students taking 16 credits who would typically spend 40 hours a week in academic pursuits would end up spending 44 hours a week under Calendar B.

“The big cost of this is when you’re in school, you’ll have to be more seriously in school,” said Arne Hallam, chairman of the task force. “It also means there would be four hours less to work or have personal time. It does make the semester more intense, but it gives you more time between semesters that isn’t intense.”

GSB Director for Student Affairs and member of the Academic Calendar Task Force Nathan Johnson said the extra week during breaks would be beneficial by giving students an extra week to gain more experience and money through internships and jobs. However, Johnson said it may not be worth the cost of intensified learning.

Breutzmann said what is lost academically by subtracting two weeks from the standard school year won’t be made up for by a J-term.

“The people who have larger credit loads will have to work even harder with the loss of two weeks, and since class selection for J-term will probably be about as limited as the summer term selections of courses, students won’t be able to subtract a class from their load and add it to the J-term,” he said. “There are just some classes that can’t be compressed into 10 days.”

Hallam said a selection of classes for J-term has not been established and will not be until Geoffroy makes his decision.

Students might be hesitant to change the calendar, but a majority of faculty and staff are in favor of the Calendar B option, Hallam said.

“For faculty it’s very clear many of them want the Calendar B option because extending time between semesters would give them more time to get research done, prepare for classes and attend professional meetings,” he said.

Many universities have longer breaks, including the University of Iowa, Hallam said. Many ISU faculty and staff are unable to attend professional meetings usually held during this time because they are either starting classes or using that time to prepare for the next semester.

“I think faculty would rather focus on teaching when they’re teaching and focus on research when they’re doing research,” Hallam said. “It’s hard to do both at the same time.”

If faculty and staff take vacation during semester breaks, it doesn’t leave much time to get caught up on continuing research or preparing for next semester’s classes, he said.

Hallam said the university’s next calendar will not be implemented next fall, but in the fall of 2005 or fall of 2006.

The GSB meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Campanile Room of the Memorial Union.