Effective March, the entire week of spring break will be considered a holiday for all Murray State University employees. University President Ron Patterson made the announcement via email.

According to Section IV-D of the MSU Personnel Policies and Procedures Manual, the week of spring break is only considered a holiday for students and faculty on academic year contracts.

For the rest of the job force at Murray State, only the last three days of that week are recognized.

However, that policy changes this year.

According to the release, the decision was made “to bring this policy more in line with what is equitable for the entire University community.”

However, the current, publicly available employee manual has not been updated to include this change in the holiday policy.

Cindy Clark, senior coordinator of circulation and Waterfield Library, spoke on the extended Spring Break.

“We are pretty excited about it,” Clark said, “I’ve worked here for 34 years so this is the first year we’ve actually got the entire week and I’m very excited and very thankful.”

“I think it’s a good thing because in the past I’ve worked at Murray State and with just having a couple days off, we wanted the whole week off,” said Lisa Winchester, a Sodexo cashier at Winslow Dining hall. “I think it’s a good thing.”