Common hour details ongoing
Students and faculty have expressed concerns regarding the effects of common hour, while those responsible for the idea defend it, saying it will be beneficial in the long run to all involved.
Starting Fall 2012, every Tuesday and Thursday from 12-1:15 p.m. will be blocked out where no classes will be available. ASUSU President Tyler Tolson said this time will be reserved for speakers or lectures that are open to the entire student body, as well as organization meetings and other things students choose to do.
Tolson said the main misconception he is hearing about common hour is that students think they will have to take classes at 7 a.m. or 4 p.m., but he said that isn’t necessarily true.
“If this common hour meant that everything would be pushed to 7:30 then I wouldn’t have been in favor of it when we passed it last year,” Tolson said.
Between 8 and 9 percent of classes are held that hour and will be affected, Tolson said, and there are 500 open classrooms that would be available. He said there is a lot of flexibility, and if professors want to stay teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays they can move to those slots, or move to Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes.
Rachel Woodruff, a sophomore in radiology said there just isn’t space in students schedules to leave that hour open.
“We go to school 9-5 as it is and then you throw that hour in there and it puts us further into the evenings with our classes,” she said.
Having every student out of class at the exact same time twice a week is also a concern, Woodruff said.
“The bus system is going to be so messed up if everyone gets out at the same time, they will be completely overloaded,” she said. “The TSC is going to packed, the library will be full, you can just tell they didn’t think this part through.”
Alan Andersen, dining services director, said they are fully supportive of the idea but it is hard to predict how dining services will be affected. He said the real question for them will be if it will increase their sales overall or just move all of their business to that hour.
“The problem for us is when everyone has the same hour off, we are going to get slammed. We are usually busy that 20 minutes between classes now, so we have that predictability. With this new change, we will just have to adjust and it will be interesting to see what happens,” Andersen said.
Either way, Andersen said they will adjust accordingly to business and meet the students’ needs. He said when it first starts out they will have to be “proactive,” but said that is the business and things like this happen.
“No matter what they do no one is going to be happy all the time. People are going to like the idea or not, you just have to adjust,” he said.
Tolson said he doesn’t remember any major issues come up when the idea came to the executive board. He said he has only started hearing issues from students because they have heard from their professors how bad an idea it is.
“Some faculty have taught classes at noon for 20 years and that is “their” time slot, so of course they aren’t going to be happy about it,” Tolson said. “It went through the appropriate channels and bodies of government that make decisions. However, it didn’t go through department heads so they kind of felt out of the process, but, with any other thing, it doesn’t have to go through that body either.”
Woodruff said maybe the way ASUSU passes these changes is the main problem.
“ASUSU should do a more random poll of people, not just ask those people they know who are of course going to be for it. If they looked outside their box of friends, they would see that the majority of students don’t want this. They aren’t doing their job, because their job is to listen to students and they clearly aren’t doing that with this change,” Woodruff said.
Tolson said the idea didn’t meet much resistance from the student leaders who were part of the decision. He said a wide demographic of students was asked how they felt and it was positive feedback.
“It was a lot like other legislation, we had passes where there might be one or two questions or concerns but they were easily resolved and passed,” Tolson said. “That is one thing I remember going really smoothly.”
Olson said he wants the process to be transparent and to remind everyone that nothing is set in stone. He said if things aren’t going to work out, changes will happen and details can mold to work with everyone.
Greater attendance to lectures isn’t the only thing common hour is for, said Jo Olsen, last year’s ASUSU arts and lectures director, who presented the idea last year.
“It started out as being a time where students can go to lectures, but it has evolved into something much more than that,” Olsen said. “If students have a group project, they now have a time they can meet that isn’t 11 p.m.”
Olsen said that even though attending lectures was the original intent, the idea has evolved from there to fit more needs and open up that time so students have more of an option.
“There are some students who say, ‘oh I will just go home and sleep or do homework’ and that’s great. We aren’t trying to force anyone to attend anything during that hour,” he said.
Woodruff said if students wanted to attend these speakers, they would find a way around it, class or not.
“It’s not like the entire university is in class at that time, if people aren’t going to lectures now it is because they don’t want to, not because their schedules are getting in the way,” Woodruff said.
Hilary Searle, ASUSU arts and lectures director, said she has had to miss extra credit opportunities because she had class and couldn’t attend a lecture, and this new program will make it so students don’t have to miss class for a lecture.
“I totally understand why people are upset,” Searle said, “but I don’t know if there would have been a better way to go about it. It has been really successful at other schools, so I guess we will see.”
Jennifer Peeples, associate speech communication professor, said if students take advantage of this opportunity, then it will be a good change, but if they don’t, it will just be a wasted hour.
Peeples said the change will cause major disruptions “no matter which way you swing it” because of all the scheduling changes that need to happen. She said if classes get dropped from their noon spot, professors don’t necessarily have a say as to when they want their class to be.
“If I lose my time at noon, when will be class be taught? I could wind up teaching Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes at 4,” she said.
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu