The Saint Anselm Student Government Association is looking to play a greater role in academic life here on the Hilltop, and many students are concerned about the negative effects of such a move.

In a resolution presented at the Oct. 27 SGA Senate meeting, Sen. Alex Odegaard of the Academic Committee proposed a “Midterms Week” to ease the stress on students during their mid-semester exams.

“We want to have a midterms week,” Odegaard said. “You will not be allowed to receive extra reading…this will also reduce stress for students who have multiple spread out over a long period of time.”

Whatever happened to working hard?  Are students unable (or unwilling) to put in some hard work and muddle through a few tests?

One thing these student representatives don’t seem to have considered is that professors will still have a full syllabus to fit into the semester. If this required period of no “extra reading” is put in place, professors will have to find some other way to fit more class work into the rest of the semester.

Other ideas that were discussed by senators were the possibility of spanning this midterms period over two weeks rather than one, and setting aside a day at the beginning for a reading day.

“We might want to make it two weeks instead of one,” Senator Jesse Imse said. “That way people are not dealing with having multiple on one day.”

Listen, midterm exams are not like finals. Instructors are not trying to test on the retention of information from an entire semester, only about a month to a month and a half. The exam will also only be a short, fifty minutes to an hour and a quarter, not the two hour block set aside for finals.

What happens to the professors who schedule three exams throughout the semester? Will this inability to assign more work still count if the exam does not fall during the assigned week? The student representatives discussed counting both tests and papers as midterm exams, so will any length paper count towards this? Again, what if the assigned paper falls outside of the specific week?

Some students would prefer that SGA focus on issues more important to students, like improving internet access on campus. Junior Bill Travascio feels passionately about this.

“This is an important issue that our duly elected representatives in the Senate should be taking on instead of debating whether or not we should have a midterm schedule that resembles a finals schedule,” Travascio said. “Our current midterms schedule works.”

Another proposal brought to the table at the Oct. 20 Senate meeting was the addition of an internship or service learning requirement to the curriculum. Student body president Lyndsay Robinson introduced the idea to the Senate.

“I’m a firm believer that what you do outside the classroom is just as important as inside the classroom,” Robinson said. “Sometimes we can focus too much on the academics and when you get in the real world it can be tough if you have not had this experience.”

The idea of this internship requirement is just another in a long line of ideas that seem not to have been thought out completely before being introduced and lauded by fellow representatives. When introduced, other senators had nothing but good things to say about it.

“I think that it is a great idea,” Senator Colleen Tracy said.

Senator Marcello Cugno agreed. “I think that is great too. It is better to learn outside the classroom.”

Not a single member thought to ask how this would affect a student’s ability to take the classes he or she truly wants to approaching graduation. As the introduction of the new curriculum will lower the number of courses per semester to four, students will have much less opportunity to choose classes. Questions have already risen in the past weeks about the impact on students trying to earn different minors with the lower number of available classes.

Students are truly concerned about the lack of discussion over changes as great as these.

“Shouldn’t there be more of a debate, especially on something as altering as an internship requirement?” senior Caitlyn Jarvis asked. “Look what it took to change the humanities program, adding a requirement is like adding an additional class.”

If students want to take an internship, they should feel more than free to do so. There is no argument against gaining some great life experience through the sampling of a career through an internship.

If someone wants to take the $48,000 a year being spent on his or her education, however, and put it towards classes offered by the school, intellectual experiences unlikely to be available beyond graduation – why hinder that?