St. Thomas University’s senate has proposed changing the timetable and students have been coming together to voice their concerns.
During last week’s St. Thomas University Students’ Union meeting, Harrington house representative Husoni Raymond said students from Harrington were displeased with the motion to change the current timetable.
“We’re working on organizing a petition and a meeting with Harrington, Vanier and Holy Cross on Monday,” said Raymond.
The goal of the house meeting would be to inform concerned students over the senate’s reasoning for proposing a timetable change.
The proposed change would make it so the timetable, which now has four allocated slots for 50-minute courses, would only have two spaces available for these courses. It would open up the timetable to have more 80-minute and three-hour courses. The change was initially proposed to take place next year, however, the senate has postponed the change until the 2018-19 academic year.
Raymond said if students from the three residences still felt concerned after the meeting, they would be organizing a petition and sending a representative to the senate this Thursday on their behalf.
Mathew Willman, a first-year studying political science, said he was initially concerned about the change. Like a number of students reached out to by the AQ, he had been under the assumption 50-minute courses were to be abolished altogether. Willman said he prefers the shorter time slots as he’s looking for employment and they allow more freedom in his schedule.
The shorter classes, he said, allow him to maintain a better level of focus within the classroom. While he’s not entirely sold on the new timetable proposal, he said he’s open to trying the new system.
“The only way I could give you my honest opinion is to try out and then compare it … I suppose and then have a student-wide vote on the matter at the end of the year to continue or discontinue the schedule for the following year,” Willman said.
Even though the change would not come into effect until after fourth-year student Jillian Hawkes graduates, she still is worried by the proposal.
“I just think that there should be equal opportunity for all the time slots so that students have the opportunity to have their needs met,” said Hawkes. “Everyone’s paying enormous amounts of money because they want an education and if they’re not getting what they need, then what’s the point of being there?”
While Hawkes acknowledges longer courses may work better for some classes, for example film classes or discussion-based courses, she said others, particularly heavier theory-based courses, are more difficult when it comes to keeping students focused and engaged in the subject matter. She said a variety of different class lengths is particularly helpful for students who may have different learning styles or who may have difficulty keeping focused in classes.
Hawkes suggests if STU were to change anything about its offerings, it should be the hierarchy of course enrollment.
“I think one of the biggest problems currently with scheduling is the lack of courses available to second-year students, because they’re the last ones to pick,” said Hawkes.
Sam Titus, a student vote on the STU senate, said the senate held committees that students took part in before making the motion. Titus said the committees determined 50-minute classes were “a bad use of time for the most part.”
“The other big contributing factor to this is that there’s been a lot of complaints about the timing of seminars and 4000-level courses … where students were forced to drop a major, or drop an honours or prolong their degree because seminars weren’t given any special kind of treatment,” said Titus.
Titus said the change means there will be designated time slots where only seminar courses will be taking place, preventing scheduling conflicts.
As a fourth-year, Hawkes doesn’t believe the change would bring enough benefit to upper-year students to be worth while. As she’s sat in many three-hour long seminar courses herself, she said there are currently plenty of available options for afternoon courses. She said seminar courses have never resulted in a scheduling conflict for her personally.
“I think the way they have it now is fine,” said Hawkes. “So I guess my biggest concern is just sort of, why fix something if it isn’t broken?”
