SUNY Oswego is the latest member of the SUNY system to remove observance of Jewish holidays from its calendar after allotting a one week break to Thanksgiving this year. 

The reasoning behind this change has been stated in vague language, according to Jewish Life club treasurer Jadah Tsounis.

“What I was told is that if we don’t do the Jewish holidays, we don’t have to do anyone else’s holidays, and then we just celebrate federal holidays, but that is not true, because I am taking a winter class and we have Christmas Day off,” Tsuonis said.

She explained that Jewish holidays fall on a different calendar set and follow a different month to month system with different days, which is why they fall on varying days every year. She added that it is not just because of the way the days fall, but because of the way the Jewish calendar coincides with the American calendar as well. 

“Schools don’t really like that because it takes away a good chunk of the educational period,” Tsuonis said. “What I was told is that … the muslim holidays work the same way, not like quite the same way but they don’t land the same time every year, so … they don’t wanna have to give off both of those holidays.”

Other SUNY schools began following this trend earlier, with SUNY New Paltz halting observation of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as early as 2013 according to the online newspage of the Daily Freeman. Rockland Community College and The New School also recently declared the same changes to their calendars beginning in 2018 and 2021 respectively. New Paltz in particular cited conflicts with academic schedules.

“SUNY Oswego is, just, I find [it] to be anti-semitic and these answers to be anti-semitic, and excuses at that too, but I wasn’t able to find a statement that SUNY put out as to why they’re doing this,” Tsuonis said. “Honestly I don’t press it ‘cause I take the holidays off anyway. It’s just more inconvenient now.”

A story by The Oswegonian dated March 2, 2018 described exactly where the motion to change the Calendar Committee’s rules for the college academic calendar arose from.

It reads: “Casey Raymond, lab coordinator and associate professor for the chemistry department, authored the motion out of concern that academic holidays significantly impacted chemistry lab requirements and jeopardized the accreditation of the chemistry program.”

It then goes on to say that Raymond explained to the faculty assembly that he felt it was important to include students and faculty in the discussion. Sources in the article mentioned fears of discrimination from faculty not complying with the guidelines requiring students to come forward personally to their professors about observing religious holidays. Every academic calendar is approved four years in advance so now, we are experiencing the results of the decision to pass the motion.

“What we need to pressure [SUNY] to do is care about the health and wellbeing of their students,” Tsuonis said, “because that’s something they don’t care about, and whether they’re Jewish or Christian or atheist or whatever, people need to be okay, and people on campus, are not okay.”

Feiga Khutoretsky is a sophomore at SUNY Oswego and said they joined Jewish Life Oswego in their first semester in fall 2021 as secretary, then became vice president in Spring 2022 and is now president of Jewish Life. David Schulman, the vice president of the club, has been in Jewish Life for three years. When asked if Jewish Life had been notified at all about the change taking effect, they both said “no.”

As far as what can be done to alleviate the fallout of this decision, Schulman offered that the campus and faculty should be understanding towards students.

“We should definitely make it easier for students who want to observe the holidays to just get that excused absence,” Schulman said. “I personally haven’t had that many issues with contracting my professors and them just signing off saying “you get the excused absence,” but I’ve heard stories from other people where it’s not as clear cut like that.”

While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how long SUNY schools have been following this trend, Schulman and Khutoretsky agreed that the decision New Paltz made in 2013 seems to be one of the earliest instances. 

“From what I understand about SUNY schools in general, it depends on the school, so I know SUNY Binghamton still gives Jewish holidays off,” Khutoretsky said, explaining that more schools used to observe the holidays but began tapering them to where only a few still have not made the change. “Oswego was one of the last ones who was still giving it off.”

Photo by Jewish Life via Laker Life