Why are some classes at 8 a.m. but not others?

Very few students are willing to attend class at six in the morning. Professors are lucky to attract even a handful of alert students to their 8 a.m. courses. Trying to schedule classes so that both students and professors are happy is a task for King Solomon. Or at least Hirschel Kasper.

"I may have invented the 75-minute class," Professor of Economics Kasper said. "At one time it was not a legal time."

Kasper's introductory economics course is still listed in the course catalog as a 50-minute class, a relic from the days when classes jutting into the noon hour could bring sanctions from the dean.

Although noon courses are now legal, courses still cannot meet at midnight on Wednesday.

"There are certain times you're supposed to leave open," Associate Dean of the College Suzanne Gay said. "It's an access issue."

Departments create their time schedule based on professors' preferences and with an eye towards avoiding conflicts between two courses that might be attractive to one student. Scheduling is done using a point system that assigns points to class times based on their popularity. The most points go to the most popular class times such as 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., while night classes are ranked much lower. Departments must average out points to achieve a number determined by the College.

"This way, courses must be spread out," Gay said. "I think it's a fairly simple system, although I don't know if anyone would agree."

"It's one way of constraining people and making choices," Kasper said. There were rarely fights in the department, Kasper said, over who would have to teach the 8 a.m. courses. "Jim Zinser gets in at 7:30 a.m., so he doesn't regard it as a problem to teach those classes, whereas I would, " Kasper said.

Kasper remembers a time when professors tried to schedule classes at unusual times. Classes might meet late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. "The notion was students could reflect and come back," he said. "It was no great shakes."

After Gay has approved the class schedules, it's up to administrative assistant Sheila Harley to find rooms to put them in.

"The toughest part is assigning each person to a room that fulfills their specifications," Harley said. "The whole assigning process usually takes about five to seven days."

Harley has been single-handedly assigning rooms by hand since 1971. There is no computer program to speed the process.

"Somehow we've always managed to squeak by and fit everyone in some sort of space," Harley said.