Sarah Simpson, kinesiology senior, said she often spends more than five minutes walking from one class to the next. But Simpson’s trek is from room 5 to room 6 of the Lockett Hall basement.
“This is the only building I’ve seen be this congested,” Simpson said.
Simpson said the halls are packed between classes, and it is difficult to get in and out of the building. She said the small space gets stuffy while students are waiting for other classes to end.
Charlie Egedy, mathematics graduate assistant, was a full-time instructor from 2000 to 2005. Egedy said he has witnessed the traffic problems in Lockett, and they are not limited to the basement.
He said noisy students in the hallway can be distracting to classes still in session.
Egedy said the halls in the basement are not wide enough, but the main problem is students do not know how to move in a crowd.
“The fire marshal would probably shut the place down if he walked in right before class,” Egedy said. “It’s unsafe.”
Patrick West, University manager of Occupational and Environmental Safety, said the high occupancy of the building probably is not a fire code violation because Lockett has many adequate exits, some of which are linked directly to classrooms.
Simpson said the halls are crowded at 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There are at least five large classes scheduled from 11:40 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the basement of Lockett on those days, according to the Registrar’s course offerings list. The total student occupancy of these classes is 1,093, including one class of 383.
From 12:10 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday there are classes of 380, 200, 164, 161, 139, 132 and 70.
Simpson said the University could help the traffic problem by avoiding scheduling high-occupancy classes next to each other at the same time.
Egedy said it would not be logical to change course scheduling to relieve congestion. Robert Doolos, University registrar, said there are a limited number of large classrooms available at the University. There are seven classrooms in the basement of Lockett, ranging in capacity from 142 to 383, he said. Doolos said the University has only 24 classrooms that seat between 100 and 383 students. “Because that’s so limited and the demand for large classes has increased over the years, we have to use every classroom that is available,” Doolos said. “We have no choice.” The most heavily scheduled hours are from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, Doolos said. He said the scheduling office does its best to spread classes out. There is a policy that a department may offer no more than 55 percent of its classes during prime time scheduling, he said. Doolos said shifting to alternate class starting times would limit students’ scheduling opportunities because it would mean crossing two time periods. For example, a student scheduled for a class from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. would not be able to schedule any classes from 11 p.m. to noon. Doolos said under this system, it would be difficult for students to schedule all the classes they need.
—-Contact Emily Holden at [email protected]