It is Sunday afternoon and similar to any other week I have just started to sit down to write my article for this week’s issue of The Pendulum.

However, what’s different about this week is the fact that today is Easter.

And, instead of spending it with my family, I am alone in my dorm room working on homework.

My roommate is at home having dinner with her family, most of my residence hall is home, but I am stuck here because there is no feasible way, with class both on Good Friday and Easter Monday, that I would be able to go home to New Jersey for the most important Christian holiday of the year.

Not having a single day off for Easter was one of the biggest surprises I received after deciding to attend Elon.

Elon is a Christian-affiliated school, and with an extremely large percentage of students celebrating this important holiday, one would assume the school would give its students at least one day off to be with their families and celebrate their religion.

Being Catholic, Good Friday is an extremely important day when we are not supposed to speak between noon and 3 p.m.

However, many students had class at these times and so could not even attend the Stations of the Cross service that was offered at 12:30 p.m.

Many other activities also carried on as if it was a normal weekend.

There were rehearsals for the theater all weekend, including Easter morning.

There should be some way to change the original times of events so rehearsals would not have to occur on such a special day.

I more than understand that technical rehearsals have to happen on specific days according to when the date of the actual show, but I would hope it would be possible to at least not have rehearsal on Sunday morning.

Many other students were stuck on campus because of various other obligations or the fact that they just couldn’t get home for the weekend.

Many students left Friday right after classes, so they would have time to spend with their families but had to leave as soon as church was over Sunday morning in order to make it back in time to prepare for classes on Monday.

Elon should realize that a large percentage of students come from more than 400 miles away and these students, because of where they live, are not able to travel home and back in a single weekend.

My parents left at 5 p.m. on Friday evening when my dad came home from work to drive down and visit me. They arrived in North Carolina at 2 a.m.

We spent all Saturday together but then Sunday, immediately after church and breakfast, they left so they would be home by midnight.

They had to forgo their original plans for all of us to spend Easter with my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles so they could be with me for a day.

Although I am a freshman, I have heard that typically there is not a day off for Easter, and I would just like to suggest that we at least have Monday off to allow students travel time so that they can be with their families.