With Syracuse University on the brink of instituting a five-day work week scheduling plan, many students have chosen to protest in the name of saving their Thursday-night partying.

Whether they’ve voiced their opinion at one of three university-hosted forums or sent an e-mail complaint to the scheduling website, one thing students can’t do is claim that Syracuse is the only school re-examining the way they schedule classes. Current scheduling paradigms at other universities are in trouble and under review, forcing some officials to put unappealing scheduling grids before their students.

‘It’s nice to know we’re all colleagues in this,’ said Judith Ruderman, vice provost for academic and administrative services at Duke University.

Duke officials faced similar student opposition to a scheduling proposal almost identical to the one put before SU.

‘I was surprised by the vehemence of the reaction we got from students,’ Ruderman said.

Despite students’ opposition to the plan, the university still felt the need to address the dining hall crunch, the hourly traffic jams on the intercampus bus system and the empty Friday classrooms. The committee that initially drafted a new schedule balanced the classes between Wednesday and Friday.

‘We worked on maximizing our days on Monday through Thursday, but also we tried to make Fridays more robust,’ said Ruderman. ‘[Basically], we made a concession to faculty and student requests for more two-day-a-week classes.’

Duke’s scheduling plan will not be implemented until the fall of 2004. Ruderman feels that student complaints have subsided enough to instate the policy without further revision.

Other schools canceled proposed scheduling changes due to proactive student resistance. Notre Dame scheduling advisers responded to complaints last spring from students who were unable to register for required classes with a schedule change.

‘Not using Friday well was perpetuating the problem,’ said Ava Preacher, assistant dean in the College of Arts and Letters at Notre Dame University.

Preacher chaired a committee that released a scheduling recommendation to the student body proposing that the university switch from a Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday format to a Tuesday/Thursday and Wednesday/Friday format. In the newer proposal, Monday would be fully scheduled with once-a-week recitation-like classes and labs. Notre Dame’s policy of not scheduling class after 6:15 p.m. added to the ‘time crunch.’

‘When we passed the resolution, we received an overwhelming amount of negative feedback, especially from faculty,’ Preacher said.

Complaints ranged from complications to athletic team travel, faculty conferences often held on weekends and conflicts with required physical education classes.

‘We came to learn that students and faculty were quite happy with the current schedule,’ Preacher said.

Notre Dame repealed the policy over the summer with no intentions of changing the schedule. University scheduling advisers will continue to annually review the scheduling policy but don’t plan to make any major changes anytime soon. They will use a major fluctuation in student complaints as their signal to change.

‘It may hit us this year, it may hit us 10 years from now,’ Preacher said. ‘But we won’t do anything until we hear it from the students and faculty.’

Five years ago, Ann Hamilton, the registrar of Wellesley College, was hit with these kinds of comments.

‘Overall, the university was unhappy with the scheduling system,’ Hamilton said. Students’ lightest day was Monday, and a four-day work week had faculty competing for technology and students competing for seats. Hamilton put together a committee of five faculty members and one student to address these issues.

The role of students in creating Wellesley’s new plan set it apart from SU’s approach.

In the spring of 2003, Vice Chancellor Deborah Freund appointed 16 faculty members to an ad hoc committee to make scheduling changes at SU. No students were appointed to the board.

Hamilton said Wellesley felt that a student representative was important because the committee was changing students’ schedules to fulfill so many student necessities.

‘We changed our schedule to meet a variety of needs,’ Hamilton said. ‘We made Monday a regular class day so students had more reading time in between classes.’

A lighter Wednesday was a by-product of making Monday a heavier work day, Hamilton said. Wellesley now has three hour-and-a-half blocks reserved for community time, which is used for campus-wide picnics, faculty meetings and student-teacher conferences.

SU is considering implementing a Wednesday afternoon time block for student organizations to meet. Faculty would also have a chance to hold meetings, said Rosanna Grassi, associate dean of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a member of the ad hoc committee.

Hamilton said the community time had a definite positive effect on Wellesley.

‘It’s working out quite nicely for us,’ said Hamilton.

When the committee redid the schedule at Wellesley, it also created a policy to review the schedule system every five years. As the schedule approaches its first review, set for this January, Hamilton is confident that things will stay the same.

‘I don’t hear a lot of problems,’ Hamilton said. ‘I don’t think the college will have to make any drastic changes for a while.’

Published on September 30, 2003 at 12:00 pm