Instructor takes issue with decreased student attendance due to Final Four

I am a huge sports fan. Anyone who knows me, or has taken one of my classes, knows that there is almost nothing I am more passionate about than sports. College, pro, amateur, extreme, strange, winter, summer, whatever, I love them all. And I love that Syracuse made it to the Final Four. I even love that, thanks to the Student Association, Otto’s Army is being bused to and from Atlanta.

What I don’t love, however, is that, despite our having lost, students will be missing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in most cases because they will get in too late to make early classes in any sort of human form. When you teach a Monday and Wednesday class like I do, that means they are missing an entire week.

It just seems as though there had to be a more efficient way; leave Monday night after the game. Leave at some horrible hour on Tuesday, like 3 a.m. The students will be sleeping on the bus no matter when you leave, so just make sure they are back for class.

Obviously the NCAA and networks are partially to blame for using a Saturday-Monday schedule for the finals and not a Friday-Sunday. I get that. But we do have to take care of our students as students first and fans second. Going to the Final Four is, most likely, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I don’t begrudge them that experience one bit. In fact, I am jealous. But missing an entire week of class this close to the end of the semester is a tough pill to swallow as an instructor, and I wish there were a better way.

Jenny Caplan

Ph.D. student, religion department

Instructor in religion and Judaic studies