Students at IU-South Bend successfully launch napping club

IU-South Bend students Michael Duttlinger and Joe Spencer wanted to help other students sleep, so they started a nap club for their peers to rest between classes. The idea began as a joke until they realized that providing an opportunity for napping on campus could benefit students – and that the university would allow it.\n“Pretty much any club that fills out all the forms, has four officers and doesn’t break the rules can be approved,” Duttlinger, the club’s president, said.\nThe club was started to help prevent students from nodding off during classes by providing a safe napping environment between classes to promote the physiological benefits of sleep.\n“We have done a little research, nothing too in-depth, but enough to know how to back up our case against skeptics,” Duttlinger said.\nThe club has nine air mattresses purchased with the club’s allotted funding and a room on campus where students can come to nap from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday. A moderator, usually Duttlinger or Spencer, wakes up students at the times they specify. There is no limit on nap length, but Spencer, the club’s vice president, said the average napper usually comes in to rest for 20 to 40 minutes.\nThe two students formed the club last November, but execution of the on-campus nap room began this semester. \n“I was a little nervous about whether anyone would show up,” Spencer said.\nThe club currently has more than 30 students on its e-mail list, and anyone who shows up can use the service as long as he or she stays quiet. \n“We were worried about what would happen if we got a loud snorer, but so far we haven’t had one,” Spencer said. \nOnly two or three students are usually napping at one time. Around 10 to 18 students cycle through the room during the course of a day. Spencer predicts that students will use the service more around midterm and final exams.\n“I’m sure it will continue,” Spencer said. “I think students want it enough.”\nWhen Duttlinger and Spencer asked sociology professor Daniel Olson to be the club’s faculty adviser, he asked if they were joking.\n“At first I was a little suspicious,” Olson said. “I thought, ‘Maybe they want to see how far I’ll go with this,’ but they were serious.”\nOlson decided the creation of the club was based on “practical concerns.” The IU-South Bend campus is comprised of commuter students. Before the creation of the nap club, students were stuck on campus during class breaks without dorms or lounges to take a nap, Olson said.\n“In Bloomington there are places on campus with couches,” Olson said. “You see students sacked out all over the union, but there’s no place to go here.”\nOlson said some of the national news coverage of the nap club implied that students were lazy for napping during the day. But he said students have reason to be tired because many work jobs in addition to taking classes and have to study late at night after finishing shifts at work.\n“When students would fall asleep in my class, I thought I must be really boring, but then I realized they are actually really tired,” Olson said.\nIU senior Anna Saraceno usually spends every Monday and Wednesday afternoon at the Indiana Memorial Union sleeping in between classes.\n“I think the union has enough couches,” Saraceno said. “Though sometimes when I try to find a full-length couch, they’re all taken.”\nSaraceno said it would be nice to have a service where a moderator watched her things and woke her up from her naps.\n“I don’t have an alarm clock to bring with me,” Saraceno said. “I usually have someone call me when I want to wake up.”