COLUMN: Wasting a perfectly good hour
In an age of budget cuts and unpopular decisions, the latest casualty comes in the form of an hour of prime class time erased from the schedule. The replacement is an hour dedicated to guest lectures and faculty meetings as well as other student convocations, and was described in detail in the Utah Statesman last Monday. The change, proposed by Jo Olsen, seems to be nothing more than an attempt by a former arts and lectures director to leave his legacy. This change, however, will be resented by students for years to come.
The hour in question is between 12 and 1:15 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday. Historically, this has been a very busy hour for classes. Typically, the classes at this time fill up quickly, thus making them hard to get into. Often, this causes many students to be forced to bump their class schedules to either 7:30 in the morning or 4:30 in the afternoon. Both times are typically difficult for students to manage. Many have to be to work before 4:30, or work nights making a 7:30 class rather inconvenient.
For me, 12 is the perfect time to have a class. My ideal class schedule is anytime between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. It allows for a student to hold a part-time job to pay for college and still get plenty of sleep even if they work until 10 p.m. or later. For example, a student could have classes from 9 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, work from 3:30 to 8, and try to complete all their homework after that. If the crucial hour of 12 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. was eliminated from possible class hours, they may be forced to quit their job in order to accommodate a 3:00 or 4:30 class. Even if the class was moved to 7:30, the student would have to forgo sleep or get to bed before midnight. In my experience, that is difficult for a college student to do.
Surely, one can argue that the student could simply do their homework between the hours of 12:00 and 1:15, but that also happens to be lunch time. I, for one, would be sorely tempted to take a lunch hour and shoot the breeze with my friends as opposed to shutting myself up in the library for an hour trying to get some homework done. Not that it necessarily should, but popularity clearly did not take precedence when considering this change.
I assume most students on the Utah State campus do not attend guest lectures that often. The argument put forth by Jo Olsen is that students whose fees go towards guest lectures and events should all be able to attend said events. A common hour allows for no school-related conflict. Most events that have piqued my interest have been events held at night when no classes are in session. A majority of the money spent on guest appearances this year went to BJ Novak, an event that only a small percentage of the student body could attend due to capacity. An even smaller percentage actually attended the event due to lack of appeal. The fact of the matter is, most students are here to get their education and get out. By forcing students to give up an hour of prime class time to accommodate a minority seems unfair and irresponsible.
The strongest argument that I have heard for this common hour for lectures is that nobody will miss a lecture because they have a class at that time. It is a valid argument, but the choice of the hour from 12:00 to 1:15 was a horrible decision. I think a better option would be 3:00 or 4:30, an alternative noted by political science department head Roberta Herzberg in the main article last Monday. It makes much more sense to me. It would allow the prime class hour to be maintained while allowing for a common hour so nobody would have the problem of conflicting class schedules. While this does not help those who work at these hours, it would ease the suffering of the thousands of students on campus who have very little interest in attending guest lectures.
In an ideal world, everything would remain the same. Those who want to attend guest lectures could make changes to their individual schedules to accommodate the time. The rest of the student body could go about their lives unaffected by the minority’s choice to attend these events. If all else fails, put it to a vote. At least then the decision would be made by the studentbody itself.
Tyler Barlow is a sophomore majoring in computer engineering. He can be reached at tyler.barlow@aggiemail.usu.edu