Student Assembly

Dear President Skorton and Cassie,

I would like to formally communicate to you Resolution 9: Regarding the Proposed Final Exam Scheudle: Fall 2014, which was sponsored by our Executive Vice President, Juliana Batista.

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone involved for allowing us at least 72 hours to review these scenarios, as Provost Fuchs suggested last spring. The process implemented this year allowed Student Assembly members more time to consider the three provided scenarios, and make more informed decisions on behalf of the student body. I would like to encourage that we continue with this procedure for future semesters.

As you can see in the final version of the resolution, attached to this email, the Student Assembly voted to support the first “balanced” scenario proposed by the Registrar. Because this type of a recommendation falls under our guidelines as a “Sense of the Body” resolution, students who were not Student Assembly members, but were present during the meeting, were allowed to participate in the voting. The students were unanimous, and these community votes were tallied in favor of this proposal.

The reasoning for this decision was based on the number of students who would experience “bad events” under any one of the scenarios. Our goal was to make a decision that would provide the best schedule for the most students possible.

Although the “balanced” scenario initially seemed like a poor choice because it would cause the most direct time conflicts, the SA ultimately decided that the other “bad events” were more crucial to the decision. The logic is that when a student has a direct time conflict for finals, most professors are willing to offer the student an alternate time. Even though direct conflicts are stressful and may cause other scheduling issues for students, we believe that professors tend to be flexible in these situations, especially when compared to other events, such as back to back exams, or 3 exams in 24 hours. These other bad events tend to be the greatest causes of stress to students, because professors do not feel obligated to comply with requests for alternate testing times, and because these situations are often mentally and emotionally demanding.

Since the “balanced” scenario had the least number of students with 3 exams in 24 hours, 3 exams in one day, and back to back exams, we decided that Scenario 1 would be the best option. We give this as our recommendation, hoping that the EPC and Dean of Faculty take special care to ensure and enforce that professors are fair and flexible with students, especially when students have direct time conflicts.

We recognize that last year’s final exam schedule had a particularly negative outcome for freshmen, but did not think that it was fair to choose a scenario that prioritized freshmen more than any other class, especially because this scenario did not provide less “bad events” than Scenario 1 in almost every category. Hopefully, this scenario will allow final exam period to be as smooth as possible for students in all years.

Although SA members understood that it is important for the Registrar to determine the schedule after the Add period (like Provost Fuchs said last year, “we discussed that the best time for developing the scenarios would be after the add/drop period as that will result in the most stable data on which to develop a schedule”), many Assembly members urged that further attempts should be made so the schedule may be posted earlier in the future. This was of particular concern for international students who must book flights home far in advance to ensure a seat, for a relatively reasonable price. Perhaps, it may be possible for the Registrar to monitor Add/Drop traffic over the course of the beginning of the semester and determine the date for the release of the final exam schedule based on these numbers. Even though the Add period ends on a specific day, the number of students who are adding classes up to the week or two prior to the deadline may be negligible. This could allow the schedule to be released earlier.

Lastly, I would like to point out one major source of discontent that Student Assembly members expressed during our debate on this resolution: that study period is abbreviated. The students who expressed this opinion in our meeting are not alone, and the decrease in the time allotted for students to study is a cause of stress for students. Conflicts take a bigger toll on students when the study period is shorter. I would like to initiate a conversation about the possibility of extending the length of the study period for students. The general consensus was that if students had more time to study, it would improve their overall mental health during finals, and would perhaps help students to better prepare to endure more “bad events.” This may be a good long-term solution, because in essence, it makes “bad events” less “bad” for students.

Thank you very much for your consideration of this resolution. I am looking forward to hearing back from you, and working together to ensure that the scheduling of final exams may benefit as many students as possible.

Best, Sarah