“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”

– Epicurus

The SGA, along with university professor John Pease, is seeking to push a bill through the University Senate that would cap the number of finals a student has to take at two a day, instead of the current three-exam maximum. While this is certainly well-intentioned, the implications of such a bill make it unreasonable to implement.

The Student Government Association is seeking to make the study day open as an option for students who are taking more than two exams in a day, but the provost and registrar have already raised objections over the cost of implementing the proposal.

Opening the study day leads to a slew of issues, one being the number of exams a professor would have to create. An alternative to opening study day would be lengthening finals week or extending testing hours, but this would be costly, as professors and teaching assistants would have to be paid for the additional work hours.

Furthermore, a study performed by the university registrar shows that less than 1000 out of about 35,000 undergraduate and graduate students would be affected by this bill. The additional financial and time burdens for all involved in the examination process are unreasonable for such a backburner priority.

While having three exams in a day certainly isn’t an optimal situation, college students need to be able to deal with at least a minimal amount of adversity. It certainly isn’t the place of the faculty or the university to bend over backwards to accommodate students on an unnecessary proposal that further complicates the exam process and serves as a benefit to very few and a detriment to many.

It’s great that the SGA is seeking to improve the student experience at Maryland, and they should never let costliness of reforms be the sole reason for them to shy away. It’s also promising to see them trying to act through the senate, where the opportunity for real change can be, instead of trying to pass a meaningless internal resolution.

But when the SGA wants to go after something with such heavy implications as potentially changing the academic calendar, they need to carefully consider whether the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits. The merits of this bill are simply insufficient for the senate to pass.

Our view: A bill capping the number of finals a student has to take in a day at two has too many negatives to be passed by the University Senate.