The University of St. Thomas Undergraduate Student Government announced Wednesday that an additional day will be added to Thanksgiving break going forward.
Student leaders shared that they originally got the idea of including the day before Thanksgiving past the faculty senate and approved by university President Rob Vischer in the Fall 2025 semester.
“Even Vischer himself was very enthusiastic about this, and I think I personally wasn’t expecting faculty to be so excited about it,” USG President Ilham Mohamud said.
Senior Alexis Buresh, the vice president for academic affairs, said the process was first set into motion when she was a sophomore and involved multiple surveys, pitches to the university and ideas of how the academic calendar could be restructured.
She explained that the original plan was to start and end the fall semester earlier as well.
“But we kind of got this advice that, like, do what you know you can get right away, and we were advised that we could definitely get that Wednesday before Thanksgiving if we really pushed it,” Buresh said.
Sophomore Renee Nies is currently the vice president of USG but started off as out-of-state senator after coming to St. Thomas from California. She said she had to skip classes in order to get home in time to celebrate the holiday with her family.
“I was really representing those students who are from out of state,” Nies said.
Lisa Sexton is a first-year student from Washington who said she is glad to have the extra day off.
“I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving last year because, like, traveling would be way too hard because when it’s a holiday, tickets are expensive and also there’s not really a good buffer travel day,” Sexton said. “So that, like, would really stress me out … the first time I went home that semester was for J-term.”
The change goes into effect for the 2026-27 school year. Mohamud called this “a major step forward” for students.
“Imagine what the years ahead of us will do and will accomplish from this big and major accomplishment,” Mohamud said.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
