Students plead for say in Activity Hour change

Student leaders voiced their opposition to the proposed change in Activity Hour at the Board of Trustees meeting on Feb. 11 and urged the board to consider giving the student body an opportunity to vote on the change.

Provost Lawrence Frank announced in a Student Government Association meeting on Jan. 12 that Activity Hour would change from the current time slot of 1:40 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. to the new time of 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.  As reported in the Feb. 9 issue, students have signed petitions to keep Activity Hour at its current time slot. 

SGA, the Independent and other student organizations worked together to organize petitions to keep Activity Hour at its current time slot.  The SGA created an ongoing survey to ask the students how they felt about the change, and according to SGA Vice President Stephan McCollom, about 400 students have already responded that they do not want Activity Hour to change. 

With the petitions and surveys on hand, SGA President Miguel Loeza and the Independent's Editor in Chief Victoria Tullock spoke before the Board of Trustees and asked the Board to consider the student body's voice in their decision to change Activity Hour.

"I think the students should have a good say in this," said Tullock. "I've seen students that don't even know what's going on and that bothers me a little bit because we pay our student activities fees and we should have a say."

Tullock presented the board with the petitions that after one week had already recieved 411 signatures.  Students who signed the petition were asked to write a reason for their opposition to the change, and Tullock read some of these reasons aloud.

One student wrote "This would severely limit my involvement at NEIU."  Another student wrote "3 p.m. is when parents pick up their children."  "It's too late.  People won't participate," wrote another student.

Tullock went on to talk about how the change would impact student organizations who meet at that time.

"It's going to be a really horrible time for student activities," said Tullock.  "The concern is that we're going to start losing membership in activities and organizations."

"We're going to ruin our student life," said Tullock.

As reported in the Jan. 26 issue of the Independent, the change of Activity Hour is part of the University Strategic Plan Initiative and aims to open up the 1:40 p.m. time slot to offer more courses.  According to Frank, there is less of a demand for classes at 3 p.m. and opening up more courses at 1:40 p.m. would enable students to take the necessary courses to graduate sooner.

The Board of Trustees Chairperson Walter W. Dudycz brought up this point to Tullock and asked if she felt that offering more course sections would help graduation rates.

"I think that changing it will open up more courses, I'm not gonna deny that," said Tullock.  "But how many students may stick around is another question you have to ask yourselves."

"To have students upset about it and not even care about graduation rate, they're just mad because we weren't asked," said Tullock.

Grace Dawson, a member of the Board of Trustees, offered her opinion on the matter.

"I do empathize with you because most people, myself included, we don't like to be told what to do," said Dawson. "We like to be asked and be able to work in conjunction with the whole thing."

Loeza explained that asking the student body was what the SGA intended to do, but they were not given enough time to do so. 

"We asked Provost Frank for some time to survey the student body and we were not granted the month that we asked for which we thought was necessary for the time it would take us to do a survey," said Loeza in regards to a meeting held in November between Frank and the Student Senate.

Loeza said that the Student Senate took a vote in January on the change of Activity Hour.

    "The vote that came up in Student Government Association was against it," said Loeza. "We do not support the change in activity hour."

"We're against the change in activity hour because we were not given time to ask the student body, so how can we make an informed decision without knowing what our constituents think about it?" said Loeza.  Loeza closed his statement by once again urging the Board to consider giving the students enough time to conduct a formal survey.

Dudycz reminded Loeza about the benefit of opening up more course sections and explained that the Board has the students in mind.

"We as a board, or actually the administration, we want to be fair to our students, we don't wanna upset anybody," said Dudycz. "We want to do what's best for the university as well as the students."

According to Loeza, the Board said they cannot make a decision at this time and must wait to meet with administrators. 

"I hope that the administration reevaluates what they have done and they understand that before making a policy that is gonna affect the student body to actually come to the student body and ask them for their opinion and what they think about the change," said Loeza.