Amherst student walks into mail room confident of the easy semester she has planned, when, as she looks over the final examination timetable, she notices that not only does she have two exams scheduled on the last day of finals, but has Sociology and English papers due, as well as her flight back home.

Sound familiar? Exams always bring their share of academic stress and logistical problems, but many such problems could be solved by switching to a completely self-scheduled exam system.

In the survey appended to this semester's SGO election ballot, almost 70 percent of respondents favored switching to a new exam system that would allow greater flexibility and independence. However, this semester offers only 16 self-scheduled exams, compared to 59 exams in fixed time slots.

There seems to be a discrepancy in the way the College treats its students-regarding us as adults fully capable of making our own decisions regarding alcohol, sexual activity, gambling and other social activities, while simultaneously underestimating our potential in the academic sphere. Does the problem here lie with procrastination? Naturally, there will be those students who choose to take all their exams on the last day and party the night before, but is it the College's responsibility to watch out for inveterate slackers?

The other major impediment is the looming specter of dishonesty and cheating. No one is arguing that cheating does not occur at Amherst, or that the self-scheduled exam system will not allow for easier access to answers. Replacing our current Statement of Intellectual Responsibility with a more standardized disciplinary procedure that requires professors to report any instances of cheating to the disciplinary committee could prevent potential problems from developing.

In particular, an honor code carries more weight in the minds of students than a Statement, as evinced by the 57 percent of respondents to the same SGO survey who either do not believe the College has an honor code at all or that it is in any way enforced. In addition, self-scheduled exams could be proctored to cut down on the temptation to glance at a neighboring paper.

Though moving to all self-scheduled exams might cause some initial kinks, it would create a more practical and user-friendly system in the long run-One that would allow Ms. Amherst to space out her work and play without resorting to NoDoz or buying papers off the Internet.