This past week, many Moscow and Pullman residents (though perhaps not the businesses) have been enjoying the lighter traffic and emptier stores that come with spring break and the temporary departure of students from both WSU and UI to sunnier pastures. With that in mind, we found ourselves wondering about the history of campus spring breaks, and how those came about.
Even the term “spring break” is relatively modern, not appearing in the Evergreen before 1959. The idea of mass student parties on the beaches of Florida (or in our case, maybe Oregon or California) is credited as being popularized by the 1960 movie “Where The Boys Are,” and dating to the 1930s when a Colgate University coach began taking his swim team to Fort Lauderdale for training, something soon picked up both by other coaches, and then by the general student bodies.
The phrase “spring vacation” is in use as far back as 1900, but even further back we find what seems to be the actual origin of the practice: “Easter vacation.” However, for a nonreligious college that’s not entirely convenient as Easter is defined as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21 (spring equinox). As such, it can fall anywhere from March 22nd to April 25th.
When what would become WSU began offering classes in 1892, we were on a quarter schedule rather than terms, and so there was a natural break between the quarters. So, our first spring break was actually 13 days, from Thursday March 24 to Tuesday April 5 (still missing that year’s Easter, April 17th). However, it was only six days in 1893 and 1894. The next year we moved to the term system that we’ve since kept, and the break was reduced to just four days near the end of March, either Wednesday-Saturday, or Thursday-Sunday.