ITHACA — It's a blessing in some respects: During the week of Thanksgiving, Ithaca's parking problem all but disappears, supermarket lines are shorter and public gathering places — libraries, gyms, restaurants — are less crowded.
The eerie quiet that descends on Ithaca when Cornell University and Ithaca College students leave for fall break is a respite to some. But others said that, after a while, the slowdown gets to them.
“It's nice for the first week, then you wish they were back,” said Walter Jerzak, a head custodian who has worked at Cornell for 15 years. “It gets kind of monotonous.”
Cities across the country whose economies are fueled by higher education operate on an academic calendar, with its periodic shutdowns and bursts of activity when students move in and out. During fall break, Cornell campus becomes a ghost town. The handful of students who stay do so primarily to avoid long trips out West, down South or abroad.
“It's far and expensive,” said Sean O'Hara, a Cornell freshman studying biology, who stayed on campus in lieu of heading home to Hawaii.
Beside the cost and hassle associated with holiday travel, students cited the quick turnaround time (fall break at Cornell runs from Wednesday afternoon through Sunday) as a reason for staying. Cornell student Julia Gamolina, a native of Colorado, said she stayed in part to rebuild an architectural model but also because the length of a visit home would not justify the trip.
“I would have to take a day to travel there and a day to come back,” Gamolina said as she waited for a bus. “I wouldn't really get to relax.”
Saturday evening, a day before most Cornell students returned, Cornell's North Campus was nearly silent, save the hum of the electric lamp posts and the occasional tread on the salted walkways. Light shone from a handful of dormitory windows, but the buildings were generally dark. The complex, which houses Cornell freshmen, is usually abuzz with activity, echoes of conversation filling the courtyards.
“It's pretty quiet,” said Kyu Young, a student who grew up in Korea and now hails from Utah.
“It was really empty, different from how it usually is,” Gamolina added.
While many students avoided trips home, some spent Thanksgiving with relatives or friends closer to Ithaca, in major cities on the East Coast like Washington, D.C., and New York. Young said he spent Thanksgiving in Boston but returned to Cornell the next day.
Some students, however, remained on campus even on the holiday.
“I saw a few people studying,” O'Hara said. “It's weird that people would be studying on Thanksgiving.”
Despite the loneliness that some students said they felt, the sparsely populated campus helped some students connect who might not have otherwise encountered each other.
“Some of the other kids who stayed — with different courses, different schedules — we had dinner together, went grocery shopping,” Gamolina said.
The departure of students, Jerzak said, also allowed maintenance and dining hall workers to do more thorough cleanup. Still, many students said they looked forward to the end of break and the return of their classmates.
“It will be nice when people get back,” O'Hara said. “But I like a certain charm when no one's around.”
