While Pitt’s tuition and Chancellor Nordenberg’s salary appear to be locked in a perpetual… While Pitt’s tuition and Chancellor Nordenberg’s salary appear to be locked in a perpetual increase, there is one thing at Pitt that seems to be on the decline: classroom space.

With the stated purpose of improving room usage, Pitt recently revised a policy originally adopted in July 1990 to ensure that departments only schedule twice-a-week, 75-minute classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or during non-peak times on other days.

According to this Jan. 1, 2003 revision, “All classes of 75-minute duration will meet on a Tuesday-Thursday schedule,” with an exception for classes that take place from 8 a.m. to 9:15 a.m., 3 p.m. to 4:15 p.m., or 4:30 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. on a Monday-Wednesday, Monday-Friday, or Wednesday-Friday schedule.

“It was a problem that everyone wants classes between 9 [a.m.] and 2 [p.m.],” Associate University Registrar Barbara Heron said, adding that allowing 75-minute classes during peak times on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays would greatly complicate the scheduling of 50-minute courses, and thus mean that there simply would not be adequate space available. “There are enough rooms if everything’s properly utilized,” she said.

Some departments, however, report that scheduling classes has been a rather difficult process.

Fiore Pugliano, an English department adviser and lecturer, described the current situation as a “severe room crunch.” Though he said he sees the scheduling policy as a necessity, he also views it as being somewhat problematic. According to Pugliano, the policy ensures that more courses are scheduled on Fridays by essentially limiting the Monday-Wednesday option — an outcome that has caused some resentment among students and faculty.

“Many people don’t like to teach on Fridays,” he said, noting that student advisees are also often frustrated by having to take Friday classes.

An additional factor in the room availability problem, said Pugliano, has been high enrollment. From fall of 1996 until fall of 2002, Pitt’s overall enrollment increased 8.3 percent, as reported in the Jan. 9, 2003 edition of The Pitt News.

According to Pugliano, with this increasingly high enrollment, many popular classes are scheduled at the worst times — meaning Fridays, early mornings and late afternoons — because they fill up regardless. “Students get trapped,” he said.

Nevertheless, Pugliano noted that some departments have an easier time with their scheduling process. Film studies, for example, which is housed in the English department, has special requirements for the technology that must be available in a room and the length of class time required to screen movies, meaning that it can sidestep many of the scheduling issues that affect other departments.

Also, he said, departments try to use their conference rooms as classrooms to mitigate the room availability problems.

With the construction taking place in the Cathedral of Learning and the resulting loss of classroom space in the eastern part of the second and third floors, some courses are scheduled for rooms that are considered to be too far away by many students and faculty.

Classes, said psychology major Chris Linnenbach, often seem as though they are randomly scheduled “all over the campus.” Linnenbach, who is a sophomore, noted that he has a political science course in Victoria Hall, a class for which he would often be late because he must to walk there immediately after a class in the Cathedral.

In response to this criticism, Heron stressed that the registrar’s office does what it can.

“When classes are cancelled, we try to move people out of faraway buildings,” she said.

With construction in the Cathedral scheduled to continue until December 2004, and increasing enrollment figures, the situation is not expected to improve in the near future.

Despite these difficulties, Heron emphasized that there is enough classroom space if departments schedule their classes equitably and that they “try very hard” to schedule classes in a way that accommodates everyone’s wishes.

“But sometimes, we just can’t do it,” she said.