At the beginning of this semester, our editorial staff had to make a decision: we could take no breaks during the semester, we could not produce content on the university-approved no-class days, or we could have our own Evergreen spring break.

Ultimately, we voted almost unanimously to take a week off from producing content, both in print and online. 

For many students and faculty members, this has been a difficult semester for mental health, not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are no different from anyone else. 

As student journalists, we spend most of our time going to classes and working, whether that be writing, taking photos, editing or laying out pages. It takes a lot of work to produce a paper, and we do that on top of our classes. 

Taking one day off would not be enough for us to recover from the stress of what we do. And, even if we did take a day off, that does not guarantee staff members would not be free from working. Sometimes you have a story or photo due the next day. Sometimes there is breaking news. Journalism is unpredictable.

Additionally, we would need to decide whether we would not work the night before a no-class day and have no content that day, or not work on the no class day and have no content the following day. Either way, our schedule was not aligning with the university’s. 

Even if we cannot take time off from classes during that break, being able to focus on school and not worry about the Evergreen will be a much-needed reprieve. 

Several reporters and editors worked through spring break last year because of the near-constant breaking news developments with the pandemic. We know from that experience that the quality of our content suffers when we do not make time for ourselves. 

Taking a whole week off will allow us to come back fresh in a week, ready to cover what our readers need to know. 

We will still cover breaking news stories during our week off. We also intend to cover hearings for the Services and Activities Fee Committee. However, all other content will be put on hold for a week. 

Thank you for reading, and we look forward to being back March 29.