Months of debate about the future of class scheduling at Syracuse University will be condensed into less than an hour and 15 minutes of debate in Maxwell Auditorium today.

The University Senate will meet today to continue its debate on the proposed changes to SU’s scheduling paradigm. By the end of the meeting, the senators will cast their votes for which alternative will be passed on as a recommendation to Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw.

The debate will pick up where it left off at the Senate’s last meeting on Oct. 15, said Ronald Cavanagh, vice president for undergraduate studies and a creator of the university’s proposed schedule. The debate will not be extended again, and the Senate will render its vote on the matter by the end of the meeting, Cavanagh said.

The motion currently on the table asks senators to choose between adopting the paradigm developed by the ad hoc committee, lead by Cavanagh and biology professor Ernest Hemphill, and a strict enforcement of the current scheduling system. That could change, however, if the senators vote to adopt an amendment proposed by philosophy professor Robert Van Gulick and Student Association President Andrew Thomson, which would swap the ad hoc committee’s paradigm with Thomson and Van Gulick’s alternative, Van Gulick said.

‘The real action is not going to be on the motion per se,’ Van Gulick said. ‘It’s going to be on the amendment.’

The most substantial difference between the ad hoc committee’s proposal and the alternative is that Van Gulick and Thomson’s joint plan doesn’t change the pairing of days in the schedule, Van Gulick said. Although both plans increase the number of 80 minute class periods available, the ad hoc plan schedules the classes on Monday and Thursday and Tuesday and Friday. The alternative proposed by Thomson and Van Gulick leaves 80-minute classes in the current Tuesday and Thursday format, Van Gulick said.

‘You might think of it as the new proposal light,’ Van Gulick said.

Van Gulick and Thomson will bring their amendment to the floor as soon as the debate opens, said Thomson, a senior information management and political science major. Thomson and Van Gulick won’t be the only senators standing in support of their alternative. Van Gulick said he has collected nine faculty co-sponsors for the bill and Thomson planned to bring several students on board at Tuesday’s caucus for undergraduate senators. That official support is on top of anecdotal support that Thomson has heard from other faculty members.

‘People seem to support our motion, and I’m confident we’ll have no problems getting it approved,’ Thomson said.

Whichever alternative the senate does approve, the final decision will be up to Shaw. He will return his decision on which paradigm will be implemented by Nov. 17, Cavanagh said.

Published on November 11, 2003 at 12:00 pm