Sacramento State will be among the 20 other California State University campuses that will hold classes on Friday during the Veteran’s Day holiday on Friday, Nov. 11. Only three CSU campuses ?’ Bakersfield, Pomona and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo ?’ will close for the holiday.

Director of Special Programs and Enrollment Analysis Larry Glasmire said that this is because Veteran’s day is defined as a floating holiday. A floating holiday gives each university the option to acknowledge the holiday on a different day than the state observes it. Other floating holidays include Columbus Day and President’s Day.

Christmas, New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Cesar Chavez Day and Memorial Day are not considered floating holidays and the universities are required to observe the holiday at the time the state does.

Glasmire said that Sac State does not observe certain floating holidays in order to add those days into the university’s vacations. Those days are also moved in order to prevent the fall semesters from starting earlier or being extended.

The floating holidays that are moved into winter break ?” specifically for the week between Christmas and New Year’s ?’ allows the university to shut down the campus to save money and energy.

Achilles Bansale, a junior majoring in accounting, said that it is a good thing to close down the campus for the benefit of the university and it gives him more time to spend at home.

“It saves money, which is a good thing,” Bansale said. “Also, we can spend more time with our family.”

But not everyone agrees. Graduate student Aiming Zhai, an employee of the University Union, said she would rather have a shorter winter break but a longer summer break. Zhai explained that it’s harder to find an internship in the winter and that it’s expensive staying in Sacramento during the winter break ?’ since the campus is shut down during the break, Zhai doesn’t work at the time.

“It’s kind of a waste of time,” she said. “No work, no school and nothing to do.” The academic calendar of each CSU differs.

“It’s definitely not consistent within the 23 campuses,” Glasmire said.

At Sac State, he said, the decision of which floating holidays to observe and which to move around is a joint decision. It is determined by the Academic Center, which defines the academic calendar, Human Resources, and President Alexander Gonzalez, who approves the academic calendar.

The academic calendar then goes to the CSU headquarters in Long Beach to be certified. The calendar must fit the system’s requirements of having a certain number of workdays and another number of instructional days.

Recently, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a legislature that removes Veteran’s Day out of the floating holidays list. Beginning next fall it will be a holiday that the campus will observe on the day the state does but for this year everyone must head to class.