Question: "Why don't we get Presidents Day off?"

Answer:

What reason could there be for not having a full day to honor our nation's past and present leading executives?

Presidents Day falls on the third Monday of every February, and would have been honored at the UA this week on the 16th. There are 16 letters in "George Walker Bush" ÷ coincidence?

And yes, that's what the "dubya" stands for.

But the next obvious question raised for most of us is this: What connects the fact that the UA didn't celebrate the 16th as Presidents Day with the 16 letters in the president's name and with the 16 hidden right angles in the Masonic Companion's Jewel of the Royal Arch Degree?

The Office of University Communications offered a rather uninspiring response.

"The University of Arizona has not had a tradition of taking Presidents Day off," said Sharon Kha, UA spokeswoman.

Shucks. No Freemason conspiracy connection this time.

Despite the fact that Presidents Day is a federal holiday, the UA has never in its history honored it with a day off, Kha said.

"In order to get credit for a class, the class has to meet a certain number of days, so only so many holidays can be allotted for the academic year to finish in time," said Kha. Presidents Day apparently has never made the UA's list of academic holidays.

Interestingly though, UA students up until the mid 1980s got Rodeo Day off ÷ and yet, did not get a day for Presidents Day. The Rodeo Day holiday was switched in favor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day during UA President Emeritus Henry Koffler's term, Kha said.

So why did we lose Rodeo Day? Granted, the civil rights movement has a lot more to honor than a rodeo, but is it a coincidence that there are eight letters in "Rodeo Day," exactly half of 16? Or that we lost Rodeo Day about 16 years ago? Am I getting off topic?

Maybe there are things that we were never meant to know. But at least I got to that first question. Score one for the campus detective ÷ case closed.

÷ Investigation by Kris Cabulong
Campus Detective