Students should not go to class on Good Friday. Courtesy | PickPik

Good Friday will begin like most Fridays at Hillsdale College. We’ll stumble into our morning classes, exhausted by a long week of academic work and looking forward to what we hope will be a relaxing weekend. 

But that’s not how I grew up observing Good Friday.

My family and I devoted the morning of Good Friday to preparing our home for Easter and listening to my Dad read a meditation on the Passion. There was a severe and heavy atmosphere those mornings. God was suffering. 

Hillsdale is a Christian college, as its mission statement attests. But at the risk of being more Christian in name than in fact, Good Friday here begins at noon. 

The problem with the college’s current schedule of only canceling afternoon classes on Good Friday is two-fold. Not only does it neglect the spiritual needs of students and professors, it creates logistical issues with syllabi. 

Students don’t generally put themselves in the shoes of professors creating a syllabus; however, it’s a valuable exercise for the imagination – I promise it’s not as dark a place as the midterm scheduled on the day after Spring Break made it seem. 

Suppose you are laying out the schedule for a 1 p.m. core class you teach every semester. The spring semester is going to cause difficulties. Robbed of 50 minutes, it is potentially difficult for a professor to prepare students for the exams and papers they are required to write by the end of the semester – never mind that professors tend to fall behind their syllabi schedules anyway.

While you’re struggling to figure out how to fit all the required material into your class, your colleague with a morning class is planning to cancel it. Partly because a minority of students are likely to actually show up and partly because the class distracts from the day’s solemn character. It is also difficult for professors who teach two sections of the same class in the morning and afternoon. 

Holy Week is a sacred time for Christians. Good Friday’s solemnities begin on Thursday night with a commemoration of the Last Supper and the events at the Garden of Gethsemane. They follow Christ’s passion, death, burial, and, finally, His Resurrection on Sunday morning. They are at the heart of our shared Christian faith.

Entering into the spirit of these three critical days in the calendar begins by closely following their historical events – which one can hardly do while trying to pinch themselves awake in a baby bio class at 8 a.m. on Friday morning.

During these solemn days, students and professors should have the opportunity to set aside their textbooks. While academics are important, these three days should be dedicated to renewing ourselves spiritually. Academics can become paramount again on Easter Tuesday. 

For a college that is devoted to Christianity, it is strange that classes end at noon on Good Friday. Let students and professors leave academics behind for a day – cancel the remaining classes on Good Friday.