Long Beach State wastes everyone’s time in Veterans Day class switch

Isn’t it embarrassing when you accidentally walk into the wrong class? Now imagine doing that for a whole day. Students and professors are going to have a frenzied Tuesday as they may mistakenly head to the wrong classes due to the new class switch next week.

Long Beach State announced that this Veterans Day, students who have Monday classes will have them on Tuesday in the same time slots while Tuesday classes will be cancelled — cue an academic scheduling disaster.

It’s sort of ridiculous that the school has only made a two announcements to the campus via email. There are still plenty of students who know absolutely nothing about this change. Everyone is either clueless or confused due to lack of campus awareness; I found out through a Daily 49er article and most found out through some of their teachers.

They could do so much more for how much time and money students and faculty spend on this campus. It could have been mentioned more with flyers or other platforms. The sole responsibility of this annoying schedule switch now relies heavily on the student and professor which is unfair.

At the end of the initial email it states, “I wish you well as you continue your academic pursuits,” in a sort of twisted and backhanded Hunger Games reference of: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

The school tossed us into scheduling mayhem and now expects us to clean up their disorganization.

The Daily 49er reported that the change is to help even out the amount of Monday classes offered throughout the year due to multiple holidays resulting in cancelled Monday classes.

But the schedule change was altogether unnecessary and the series of steps the university took to make this happen was a waste of time. It’s a counteractive action, creating more problems not only for students but also the professors, as it constitutes extra work and additional stress.

Think about students with hybrid classes, where the class meet once a week, the commuting professors and students will have to accommodate to the new schedule when they usually have work and don’t come to campus on those days.

It’s inconvenient for both students and faculty and the lack of student awareness on the schedule switch shows how this chaos disrupts student’s learning more than ever.

Hybrid professors who have Monday classes have to update their lesson and plan two weeks in advance to accommodate this change, due to the fact that fall break is the following week. According to the Daily 49er, professors such as Norbert Schürer, a professor in the English department, had a hard time accepting the schedule change as they were not allowed to cancel class.

There are also growing concerns about students not showing up for class, which will most likely happen. To go, or not to go to class, that is the question.

Some professors I have are holding online lectures or are even making class optional instead of forcing students to commute to campus. There are some professors who are still scheduling their Tuesday classes in the regular time slots, ignoring the change completely.

Students may have other obligations including work or internships, so it’s very inconsiderate, ill-timed and infuriating for the Academic Calendar Committee to drop this information on us without considering these situations. They can’t expect students to drop their prior commitments to accommodate a last minute and poorly executed change.

Veterans Day should have just been left as is with no schedule changes. Time management in college is crucial, so the school should have a better understanding of students and professors’ times and make it worth it, not waste it.

UPDATE 11/8 10 a.m.: Veterans Day has been corrected to be spelled without the apostrophe. The story has also been corrected to show that the campus did indeed send out more than the October email.