Out: Columbus Day; In: 'Fall Weekend'

Another one of those pandering PC Ivy League cave-ins that does more to make the school an object of ridicule than it does to assuage the misbegotten guilt of some students who clearly have a lot to learn about American history.

This one ranks up there with renaming Christmas as winter holiday and the latest one I've heard, calling the Easter bunny a spring bunny. Apparently Kwanzaa is still Kwanzaa, even though that's an entirely make-believe holiday.

Sigh.

"Fall Weekend" will be taking the place of the holiday formerly known as "Columbus Day" at Brown University this fall.

The faculty of the Ivy League university voted at a meeting Tuesday to establish a new academic and administrative holiday in October called "Fall Weekend" that coincides with Columbus Day, but that doesn't bear the name of the explorer.

Hundreds of Brown students had asked the Providence, R.I. school to stop observing Columbus Day, saying Christopher Columbus's violent treatment of Native Americans he encountered was inconsistent with Brown's values.

"I'm very pleased," Reiko Koyama, a sophomore who led the effort, told the student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald. "It's been a long time coming."
The change will take effect this fall.

Absurdly, they still get Columbus Day off.

Although the students had asked the school to take another day off instead, Brown will remain closed on Columbus Day, in part to avoid inconveniencing staff whose children might have the holiday off, the Daily Herald reported.