Currently the fall and spring semesters' reading periods are three and two days long, respectively. The College Council suggested extending both periods to four days, but the Five-College agreement and other schedule constraints such as Christmas travel considerations and graduation reservations made that impossible.
"The students need an extended reading period, but it does not seem possible with the schedule we must have," said College Council member Niti Sardana '05. "The Five-College agreement is restrictive, but Amherst can't do something on its own-that would throw off the whole system, all of the other colleges would be unhappy and they would use our example as reason to start acting in their own interests as well."
The Five-College agreement mandates that the College start classes no more than three days before or after any of the other colleges and the College Council found that this restriction left them with little room to make changes.
"The major reason why we didn't propose extensions to the reading periods is that our hands are tied by the Five-College calendar agreement," said College Council Chair and Professor of English Andrew Parker. "Synchronization of the Five-College calendars has come about at a cost to our flexibility as an institution."
However, with help from a suggestion by Committee of Six member and Professor of Mathematics Greg Call, the College Council was able to eliminate the Saturday classes that were held following the first week of fall semester by adding one day to the end of the semester. This will add another day of Wednesday classes and allow Monday classes to be held on the first Wednesday of the semester, instead of on Saturday. The resulting calendar includes 13 meetings of each day's classes, the same as previous calendars.
The only potential conflict caused by the change would involve students taking UMass or Hampshire classes. If those schools hold classes on Wednesday at the same time as the College's normally scheduled Monday classes, students would have to choose which class to attend on the Wednesday when make-up classes are scheduled. The conflict will be minimal because most students have identical Monday and Wednesday schedules, according to Parker.
"The students will benefit from this schedule change; even if it's kind of a trivial change, it's a matter of convenience," said Seth Birnbaum '02, who is a College Council member. "For many students, the only difference is they won't have to make-up any work they missed from not going to classes on Saturday; for those who went to classes, it might eliminate stress from classes extending into the first weekend of the year."
The proposed College calendar has been accepted by the Committee of Six and will be voted on by the faculty later this semester. The faculty originally voted for Saturday classes in the 1980's. Biology professors raised concerns in regard to the life-span of the fruit fly; the short first week threatened planned experiments on the short-lived fly. The fruit fly quandary has not been raised in this calendar process, but Parker acknowledged that some faculty may prefer the continuity of a five-day first week, rather than the new plan.
"Anything that comes to a vote on the floor of the faculty can always get shot down," said Parker. "But Saturday classes have been unpopular, increasingly, over the years, and I think the sentiment finally is to do away with them."
Parker acknowledged that the College Council had only achieved one of its three goals due to its failure to extend either reading period and he led others in calling for an eventual alteration in the Five-College agreement to give the College more flexibility. However, any change to the agreement would require the unanimous ascent of the Five-College directors, made up of the presidents of the respective schools.
"We must remember that Amherst has a net import of Five-College students," said Dean of Students Ben Lieber. "So it's in the other colleges' interests, on behalf of their students, to keep our calendars as well-aligned as possible."
"The question is whether [a longer reading period] is an important enough issue that Amherst would abrogate the Five-College agreement and go off on its own," added Lieber. "It's pretty clear that, given the choice between that or acting in concert, we will act in concert. We're pretty much stuck with the rough outline of the calendar we have."