An hour and a half three days a week – that is what the Associated Students of the University of La Verne are asking.
This time period, known as the university hour, would be from 11:30 a.m. till 1 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday, at which time no classes would be scheduled. It would instead be a time for students, faculty, clubs and organizations to have activities, lunches or meetings.
The proposal has already passed, but the university hour has not been enforced.
“I was a commuter student as a freshman,” said Elizabeth Keagy, a sophomore economics major and ASULV senator pro tem.
“The 10 p.m. events were really unrealistic for me,” she said.
Keagy is working through ASULV with the registrar’s office to try to make university hour work.
She wants the students to have more of a chance to get involved in campus activities.
As a former commuter and now a pledge for Iota Delta, Keagy said she is experiencing even more time constraints as the Greek organizations usually have events at 10 p.m.
Some faculty, however, have had reasons for not participating in the hour and others have followed suit.
“There are many exceptions,” said Alex Lester, an executive vice president of ASULV.
“Faculty say it is the only time they can teach, and there were so many exceptions the hour just disappeared,” Lester said.
Marilyn Davies, registrar, said it depends on when the faculty can teach.
There are some full-time faculty members who teach all their classes in two or three days.
“Changing the class schedule is not as easy as you may think,” Davies said.
The notion of university hour comes from looking at other universities.
There are many schools, such as Cal Poly Pomona, which have a university hour.
On many campuses it is a time when Greek organizations have meetings and other organizations have special lunches, guest speakers and other activities.
“When we have speakers, they can talk to more students,” Keagy said.
She added that now when the University does have an event like a guest speaker, there are not many students present, because they usually have class.
There are also many times when students will miss classes to either attend a University function or simply to have lunch.
“It’s about the students,” said Keagy. “We just needed to have time for the students.”
Keagy hopes she and Davies can succeed in setting up a schedule that works for both faculty and students.
“We have to get the faculty involved,” Davies said.
She added that if they cannot work something out for this next semester, then it will have to wait until fall 2007.
“It’s really hard to make this big of a change in the middle of the year,” Davies said.
Rick Montañez can be reached at rick.montanez@hotmail.com.
Journalism operations manager at the University of La Verne. Production manager and business manager of the Campus Times.