Class schedule remains unchanged despite debate about Friday classes

After much debate during the 2011-12 academic year, IU students can rest assured they won’t see a concerted effort to add more Friday classes to their schedules.

“The workweek is Monday through Friday, and the trustees wanted to know why we aren’t using our classrooms on Friday,” said Tom Gieryn, vice provost for faculty and academic affairs.

Gieryn, as well as the University’s other vice provosts, was called into a meeting with then-Provost Karen Hansen to discuss responses to IU’s Thursday night drinking culture.

“One of the ideas that came out was to try to reduce the partying activity on Thursday by increasing the number of classes on Friday,” he said.

The administration got to work. It checked in with the deans of each school to gauge opinions on adding more Friday classes.

The deans, Gieryn said, emphasized all kinds of academic work taking place on Fridays, including lab research, job interviews, group project meetings, visiting
speakers and faculty meetings.

“They begged us not to insist that we schedule more classes,” he said.

Adding Friday classes wasn’t a popular idea with IU Student Association or the Bloomington Faculty Council, Gieryn said.

In a November 2011 Indiana Daily Student article — when the administration was discussing adding more Friday classes — then-IUSA President Justin Kingsolver said Friday classes were a “terrible idea.”

“If they want to solve the alcohol problem, they need to have an alcohol-directed program,” Kingsolver said. “They shouldn’t mess with the academic calendar, our curriculum and our schedules to solve some kind of drinking problem.”

But perhaps the most persuasive argument against more Friday classes came from reactions to the data. Two-thirds of all IU undergraduates have at least one scheduled academic class on Friday, which Gieryn said was “a big discovery for us.”

However, ending the Friday class discussion doesn’t mean the discussion about issues related to Thursday night partying is done.

“Pete Goldsmith presented some data that showed an increase in certain unwanted behavior on Thursday nights: arrests, health clinic visits,” Gieryn said of the vice provosts meeting shortly after Spierer’s disappearance.

Goldsmith said the University is looking at other ways to address the increased incidents on Thursday night, which sparked the Culture of Care campaign launch and a bystander intervention program.

“We also started the discussion about the creation of a culture of care,” Goldsmith said. “We think that these efforts will result in a safer environment for students.”

The ultimate goal is to have a safer environment where students help and take care of one another, Goldsmith said.

While Goldsmith said the Thursday night issue, lumped in with student safety, is a top priority for his office, Gieryn put the issue in perspective.

“We don’t quite have the party image that we used to have,” Gieryn said. “I also think that the students who create problems on a Thursday are a very small group.”