The original makeup plan, announced Monday, was to add an extra day onto the semester and revise the exam schedule, pushing exams into the first week of May.
“We heard a large number of concerns about plans that had already been made and were difficult to alter,” he said. “We thought it would be a wise thing to go with the Saturday [make-up option].”
Gilbert said extending the semester was impractical because of the impact it would have on students’ plans for vacations, trips, rent and job opportunities.
“We did not fully consider [the impact of the schedule change],” he said. “This [scheduling a Saturday class] is a better choice, and it should have been made from the beginning.”
Gilbert said the Saturday has not been decided and the Office of the Provost is currently working with groups on campus to find the least disruptive day.
He said the date would probably be in either February or March and would be announced in one to two weeks.
“We want to investigate what would be best for all parties involved. We don’t want to make this decision quickly,” he said. “I apologize to students and faculty for changing the decision, but after the response, I felt it was important to respond to the very real concerns on their part.”
Thomas Sellers, Student Association president, said the MSU administration should be commended for taking the response to the original plan into consideration.
“The administration listened to the feedback and realized it would cause trouble for many,” he said. “They then decided to go a different route and lessen the burden.”
Sellers said there was no easy choice when choosing a make-up day.
“The cards we were dealt were unfortunate,” he said. “We did our best to pick an option and a second option. The administration picked one route and were smart enough to realize it would affect too many people in a negative way.”
Carol Anne Clark, freshman elementary education major, said she thinks no one will attend the makeup day, but that it is better than the previous plan because exams stay on the same days.
“A Saturday class is pointless,” she said. “They had a snow day last year and didn’t have to make it up, so it’s not fair to us.”
Brandon Stuckey, freshman criminology major, said he does not mind making up the snow day.
“I understand why we have to make it up,” he said.
Kendall Wright, sophomore secondary education major, said she would have preferred the original plan to the Saturday makeup day.
“Though I know a lot of people who weren’t big fans [of the extended schedule], it didn’t really affect me,” she said.
During the initial stages of choosing a makeup day, Gilbert said he consulted Bill Kibler, the vice president for student affairs, Sellers and Hart Bailey, faculty senate president, as well as the Office of the President and Office of the Provost.
He said different options were considered, including organizing the Monday of spring break or Good Friday as the makeup day. However, both of those received negative feedback, he said. Gilbert also said the Saturday option was met with dissatisfaction. At one point, moving commencement was another choice.
Sellers said when Gilbert first approached him for input on the makeup day, he researched how other schools in the same position were handling their makeup days.
“Some schools in Georgia made up their snow day on Martin Luther King day and received a negative response,” he said. “That wasn’t an option [for MSU] because by the time we realized we had to makeup the day, it was too close for it to be considered. We’re not unique in the sense that other schools also had to make tough decisions.”
Sellers said the other schools facing a weather-related makeup day did what they thought was best.
“They didn’t make a perfect decision, and we knew we wouldn’t either,” he said.
Sellers said when initially considering extending the semester, there were several pros.
“If there is another weather-related event, we could have continued to add days,” he said. “It also wasn’t the best mood setter to have a Saturday class, which was why we were initially trying to avoid that option.”
Gilbert said the reason MSU did not have to make up the canceled weather-related day last school year was because an extra day had been built into the schedule. However, this year the schedule carried the minimum amount of hours needed to fulfill the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning’s board requirement of 2,250 contact minutes per class period.
“This includes the 180 minutes in the final exam period,” he said. “When we lost that Monday, we dropped below the number of minutes.”
Gilbert said in the future, steps will be taken to ensure this will never happen again.
“We are going to have extra days, extra time at the end of the semester and start out semesters on Mondays,” he said. “By starting on Wednesdays, we didn’t have any flexibility at all.”
Sellers said by adding extra days between the end of exams and graduation, like finishing finals on Thursday and holding commencement on Saturday, the university would have a buffer zone and would avoid postponing graduation in a bind.
“We have the ability to refinesse our schedule to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said. “We were put in a tough spot because of IHL and Maymester. We didn’t have much control. Our provost has committed to help [prevent this situation from occurring] again.”
Gilbert said the Office of the Provost is sensitive to the concerns of the student and faculty.
“We realize whatever we did would be an inconvenience. We hope this will be an acceptable solution,” he said. “We will work not to let this happen again. We thank the students and faculty for their patience.”