On Wednesday, the Student Assembly announced that it had succeeded in shifting this fall’s weekend classes to later hours. Classes will begin at 10 a.m. and 8:45 a.m., rather than 8 a.m., on the Saturdays of Sept. 26 and Oct. 24, respectively.
The weekend classes were added to the schedule because the original fall-term start date coincided with the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. To compensate, the administrators proposed two weekend with Saturday classes, college spokesperson Diana Lawrence wrote in a May email to The Dartmouth.
“We were told by Dean [of the Faculty Michael] Mastanduno that the Committee on Instruction, which is the committee that decided when class times would be, had evaluated all of their options and had decided for a variety of different reasons that Saturday was the best replacement time,” Noah Manning ’17 said. Manning and Nicholas Harrington ’17 serve as joint leaders of the Student Assembly for the summer term.
It was obvious from the start that students disliked the idea of weekend classes, let alone ones that would begin so early in the morning, he said.
“When that news came out in the spring, many students were not happy with this proposal,” Manning said. “I think we can all understand that 8 a.m. classes on a Saturday morning might not be a popular idea.”
The Student Assembly derived two counterproposals to pitch to administrators, the rationale being that if students were not able to contend the idea of the weekend classes, they should at least be able to negotiate the times. The first proposal asked for a 10 a.m. start time in place of the 8 a.m. start, while the other proposed evening classes.
“The moment we found out [about the weekend classes] we immediately gathered and decided that our best bet would be to go to the administration with proof to demonstrate how upset the student body was,” Student Assembly president Frank Cunningham ‘16 said.
To gather proof, the Assembly sent out a survey towards the end of spring term to gauge student preferences. They received 553 responses to the survey, he said. The majority of students indicated a preference for the evening classes — 69 percent. Twenty-five percent of the student body preferred the delayed start to classes, while only nine percent favored the original schedule.
Manning and Harrington then took the results of the poll to the administration at the beginning of the summer term to consider changing the scheduled class times.
“We had an appointment with Dean Mastanduno. We spoke with him and talked to him about why we thought this was necessary. He was incredibly receptive to the idea,” Manning said.
Manning added that since the final decision was up to the Registrar, Mastanduno contacted Meredith Braz, the Registrar of the College, who finalized the compromise.
On Saturday, Sept. 26, 10As will meet from 10 a.m. to 11:50 a.m., 2As from 12 p.m. to 1:50 p.m. and 3As and 3Bs from 2 p.m. to 3:50 p.m. On Saturday, Oct. 24, 9S and 9L will meet at 8:45, while classes normally scheduled on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays will operate on their regular schedules.
Manning said that the willingness of administrators to accommodate student requests made the change possible.
“I would like to say that the Student Assembly is incredibly grateful for how receptive the administration has been. Dean Mastanduno and Registrar Braz were very supportive of the ideas and readily agreed on a workable solution to the problem to make things as convenient as possible for students,” manning said.
Any change in the course schedule after it was already published felt like a long-shot, Harrington wrote in an email. So the fact that the Assembly was able to push back the start times of the weekend classes at allis an accomplishment, he wrote.
Cunningham said that the Assembly is currently busy planning and that great things are in store for the upcoming year.
Harrington continued that the Assembly has laid the groundwork for many new initiatives that it plans to implement in the fall. These include initiatives addressing mental health, sexual assault and many other aspects of a Dartmouth student’s undergraduate experience. He added that through continued hard work, the Assembly is confident that it can act as a valuable resource for students, so that it may play an active role in determining their experience at the College.
This article ran in print under the headline "Fall Saturday classes will begin later" on Aug. 14, 2015.
