Column: Dordt College schedule

Bryan C. Visser

            Last semester, I occasionally found myself running out of the commons trying to get to class because I used most of the 10 minute break between classes getting lunch.

Ten minutes is usually not enough time to go to the commons, wait in line, and eat. Even the lines at the Defender Grille can take too long.

Either something needs to change, or students will need to cope.

My initial thought was that this issue could be easily solved by altering the schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays to move the 20 minute break to a time that allowed students a little more time to eat.

When I asked Jim Bos the registrar I learned it wasn’t that simple.

“The break is where it is so that we could have labs in the morning. With the Core program now requiring all students to take a lab class there simply weren’t enough lab periods if we just went from two to five. That was to accommodate a three hour lab in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Bos said.

Bos also explained that an additional 20 minute break had been considered, but would have conflicted with the time for coaches as the last class of the day would have ended that much later.

To change the position of the 20 minute break, the labs would need to let out earlier, which would be doable if labs did not need the full three hours they are scheduled for.

In the year he’s been here, Chris Schultz has taken five labs. He explained that only one of those labs has regularly run the full three hours.

If not all labs need the full three hours to do what they need to, the shorter labs could be put in the mornings while the ones that still require that time could be put in the older afternoon slot.