On October 22, 2020, CU Boulder announced that they will be canceling spring break of 2021 in order to ensure as little amount of new COVID cases as possible. Typical college spring break usually involves an abundance of alcohol, parties and irresponsible behavior. As you can guess this can be a major hotspot for a new spark of COVID cases. Instead, the school has replaced spring break with “wellness days.” Those days are occurring on February 17th and March 25th. Which also means that the next semester will begin three days later.

     CU Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano stated, “Like every university in the county we know we can’t deliver the full, traditional college experience that everyone wants.” Despite this, the school is still taking measures to ensure that kids are gaining the full college experience while also keeping everybody as safe as possible. They are creating more social events, dining options and even invested 1.8 million dollars into mental health services. A major reason for the spark of COVID cases in Colorado was due to CU Boulder and the fact that there were still huge parties and no social distancing. Because of this CU had to switch to in-person learning.

     The students are still going to have a mix of in-person and online learning throughout the next semester. The school believes that with a healthy amount of both hybrid and non hybrid learning that it will actually be better for students’ mental health. Overall the school seems to be taking drastic measures to ensure not just the safety of the students as far as coronavirus but also their mental health. Will this cancellation of spring break change that outcome?