It’s a tale as old as time (or 1869 at least): slumped in a chair in your first lecture post mid-semester break, you see your UC mate’s story. There he is, week two into his three-week break, cracking a beer or doing whatever tragic standard ‘fun’ is for an engineer.
Our South Island universities/cousins both get three-week breaks, while all five up North get two weeks. Why do we only get one? On top of that, all other University semesters only have twelve weeks of classes – so why are we stuck with thirteen?
Upon finding this horrific fact out when enrolling at Otago as a naive Year 13, Mum assured me that the extra classes and shorter semester breaks all work out in the end: Otago students get longer summer breaks to make up for it (also a big lie, with only Canterbury/Lincoln starting a measly week before us). The thought of more time in the frigid winters was distressing (and that’s before I’d ever stepped foot in a single-glazed student flat).
After a Sem Two last year that aged me beyond my twenties in just thirteen weeks, the thought of another gruelling academic year felt worse than clocking into my minimum wage job over the summer. Determined for answers, I began digging to see why Otago tauira are punished with a system none of us asked for.
In the days after the annual November migration of breathas up North last year, a proposal was quietly put to the University Senate. Starting in 2027, Otago will decrease the length of our semesters to twelve weeks, to match our Northern counterparts. Students’ misery was not cited as a reason for the change. Instead, concerns around special examinations, graduation timing, and StudyLink processing were catalysts. Whatever. I’ll take it.
If you’re wondering what the University Senate has to do with this (or why that is a thing outside America) it turns out that this little-known bureaucratic group has an important purpose. According to AskOtago, “The Senate reports directly to the Council, advising it primarily on academic matters as the Academic Board of the University”. This is basically code for the Senate being the only group that can fix the broken system.
But why propose this change now? Students have been begging for this change for years. Pleading for less intense semesters appeared in the OUSA referendum as recently as 2023. Heck, students' pleas got so loud Critic has written about it not once, but twice, over the span of three years.
The same reasoning was always thrown out: we need longer semesters because our papers are 18 points instead of 15 (which is apparently up for debate). Pretty pathetic excuse when you realise many students at universities such as Vic do several 20-point papers each semester now. Something isn’t right, I reckon.
What really got the gears spinning in my mind was a throwaway line from an ODT article (if you can call a paywalled press release with a line or two added an article). The line quoted a discussion paper saying that reduced semesters could cause “better alignment with school holidays”.
Things were falling into place. For those of us north of Christchurch, break time usually means a journey to the airport. Every North Islander has grappled with the worthwhileness of flying home for just one week. Especially with the jacked-up price of airfares during breaks, sometimes it just works out cheaper to stay in your flat, rather than flying up and bludging off the ‘rents for a week.
If the semester were to be aligned with school holidays, this would be the perfect excuse for Air New Zealand to increase airfares even more. RNZ recently reported that an angry dad trying to send his daughter to Wellington for university reckoned it was cheaper to fly to LA than our capital during semester break. Does this mean Chris Luxon has been lobbying the University just to line his pockets?
“But wait!” you may cry. “Don’t you remember who the VC is? Chris Luxon’s (former) political enemy Grant Robertson now runs the show. Why would he be partaking in this conspiracy?!” Using theory only a POLS major could ever froth over, I am certain Daddy Grant is taking a gamble here. If airfares go up even more, students won’t buy the tickets – they’re too broke! They’ll stick around. StudyLink can only do so much week-to-week.
Higher airfares mean fewer carbon emissions in the sky. What is at the forefront of the woke-left agenda Grant is secretly cooking up in the Clocktower (at least according to my sources from Facebook’s Dunedin News)? That’s right – climate change. Checkmate Grant. I know what’s up.
The worst part of this conspiracy is that reducing our semesters by a week doesn’t even give us longer mid sem breaks. Psychologically speaking, we think we’ll be better off, but we’ll just be as tired. Like rats in a cage. If we’re just as tired, could this mean that the likes of Monster and V are next on Grant’s payroll? I shudder to think.
At the end of the day, something needs to change. It’s pretty tragic that Air New Zealand and Jetstar can put a price on time with our families. It’s also sad that our semesters mean many of us have to play the mental gymnastics of ‘Is it really worth seeing our families for just one week?’
And that is my undeniable proof that Otago’s semester system is a scam. Or that’s what I told myself at least, as I dropped over half a week’s worth of wages on flights home. To fucking Palmerston North.