First, the University should cease requiring all students, including those with an exam on the last morning of finals period, to move out of their rooms by Saturday afternoon. Those students who do have finals on the last day are put at a disadvantage: They must worry about packing up their rooms while they are studying for their last exam, whereas all other students need not simultaneously do both tasks. Currently, students with an exam on Saturday morning may request an exemption from the policy, but the default still requires them to vacate their rooms at the same time that their exam ends. Instead, all such students should be automatically granted the extra day — especially because not all students are aware that they can request an exemption. Allowing the extra day wouldn’t interfere with preparing for Reunions, as students with interim housing don’t have to switch rooms until Sunday.
Second, the University ought to revise the rule governing when finals scheduled too close together may be rescheduled. As the policy stands now, you may move one exam only if you have two scheduled within the same day. However, the policy does not allow a student who has two exams within a 24 hour period, but on different days, to move an exam. The policy should be changed to accommodate these students. Students who have one final ending at 10:30 p.m. and the next one beginning at 9 a.m. the next day have a very similar difficulty to students who have one ending at noon and the next one beginning at 7:30 p.m. on the same day. There is no reason to treat the two differently.
Finally, the policy surrounding make-up exams for illness should be carefully reconsidered. Students who fall ill before or during an exam are required to make up the exam within 24 hours or else wait until the following semester. Having some students take the exam a semester later, though, is a highly undesirable result — it is far harder to compare exam performance when some are given an entire summer either to forget the material or to study it more thoroughly than have their peers. Hence, the University should permit students more than 24 hours to take a rescheduled exam in case of illness. There is little reason to worry that this policy would permit cheating. McCosh already adopts a highly stringent standard before permitting students to reschedule exams — they must be “incapable of taking the examination” — so only legitimately ill students, who should be permitted the extra time, would be allowed to use it. Furthermore, students who are desperate enough to pretend to be ill in order to cheat on an exam are probably going to find a way to cheat anyway, so this change would not make cheating more likely. Besides, cheating is even more effective when students have until the following semester to study.
The University should seriously consider enacting these changes to alleviate unnecessary stress and provide a fair standard for taking exams.
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