With excitement swirling around the coming Olympic Winter Games, one issue remains terribly neglected. Should the University of Utah cancel three and a half weeks of class in February?
The question now seems academic because the Games will commence exactly one month from tomorrow. But why didn’t a more publicized debate occur over the past months and years? Perhaps the need to shut down the university appears self evident to some.
Why should we cancel classes? Because it’s the Olympics, you idiot!
More accurately, respected minds did scrutinize the proposal. Changes to the academic calendar must pass through the Associated Student of the University of Utah, the Academic Senate, President Bernie Machen and the Board of Trustees. OK, maybe ASUU doesn’t meet the “respected minds” criteria, but the rest do, more or less. Yet, few students seem to have considered the ramifications of the coming semester’s wacky time line.
For anyone enrolled in a beginning language course, imagine taking a month off just after getting your feet wet. Professors will lose valuable time in March by re-teaching concepts covered in January. Such a disjointed semester presents significant challenges for all courses. Why introduce lessons in January when students have all of February to forget?
To complicate matters, classes extend only one extra week into May. That means your courses this spring have two fewer weeks than an ordinary semester. Certainly, the university recognizes this and plans to send you a proportionally reduced tuition bill, right? Keep dreaming.
In the end, the shortened semester won’t decrease the number of credit hours you receive for each class. That’s fine, if students enroll at the university simply to buy a degree, not an education. This semester, the university will cheat students by making them pay for class time that doesn’t exist. Assuming that tuition pays for hours toward a degree?not education?betrays the mission and values of an institution of higher learning.
The issue of whether or not to cancel classes also raises questions about the university’s primary focus. Which ranks highest in importance?sports, education or money?
The first can be tossed out the window because even boneheads know the Olympics symbolize more than just sports. Eighty countries plan to send delegations to Salt Lake for the Games. Bringing a multitude of nations together in athletic competition allows us to experience the world right in our own backyard.
What about education? Clearly, creating an extended February break and then cutting the semester short by two weeks will make learning difficult. Did the university make the correct decision?
Conventional wisdom suggests that closing school during the Olympics is appropriate because of the Games’ magnitude. Events like this don’t come around often, especially not to Salt Lake. Hosting the world and experiencing the Games represents a once in a lifetime opportunity. Yet how many students plan to attend Olympic events? How many can afford tickets? How many received temporary jobs from the Games?
Those numbers certainly shrink in comparison to the rewards the university receives. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee paid the university $36 million for the use of Heritage Commons and Rice-Eccles Stadium. Now the missing piece reveals itself. Of course, hosting the Games is a worthwhile endeavor, even if it means wasting a semester, as long as the price is right.
The university benefits enormously from the Games. As for students, the University 2002 Olympic Coordination Office has placed 450 interns with SLOC in the past five years. Not a bad deal for those 450 students, but certainly not apt compensation for thousands of parking nightmares and a hair-brained Spring Semester calendar.
Yet won’t students ultimately benefit from university and community investment in the Games? Heritage Commons, TRAX and the 2002 Legacy Bridge represent the fruits of your sacrifice. These things are nice, but they do not reflect the university’s commitment to your education. What about books, professors and scholarships? The Olympics won’t help pay for these.
Regardless of any debate over how the Olympics benefit students, the university may have held few legitimate options in deciding whether to cancel classes. Asking students to commute during the Games would create a logistical disaster.
In that case, another possibility still existed. The university could have offered the normal summer classes during a shortened Spring Semester while moving the would-be spring schedule to an extended summer session. Why not make summer in February and spring in June?
The Summer Semester obviously attracts fewer students with reduced course selection. This would compensate for the logistical problem of bringing the entire student body to school during the Olympics.
More important, such a scheme would display the university’s commitment to students and their education. Then, even in the course of welcoming the world, the university would not forget its own.
James welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].