Last October, LSU Testing and Evaluation Services celebrated Halloween by decorating the Testing Center at Himes Hall to look like a cemetery, complete with inflatable gravestones inscribed with foreboding messages like “R.I.P. my GPA” and an eight-foot-tall grim reaper decked out in LSU merchandise.
As Tiger TV reported last year, the LSU Testing Center evokes fear in the minds of LSU students. It makes them anxious, unable to focus and less confident in their exam preparation.
But as exam season approaches, LSU students have a new qualm with the Testing Center: long lines.
“I was scheduled to take an exam in Himes Hall this past Thursday,” philosophy sophomore Hayden Braziel said. “The line was backed up to the Quad! I had to wait fifteen minutes just to get in the door. I’ve never seen this many people at Himes before. I was just shocked.”
Braziel isn’t alone. The last week has marked one of the busiest weeks in LSU Testing Center history.
According to David O’Brien, the director of the LSU Testing Center, the Center has tested over 20,000 students in the last eight days alone, amounting to about 2,500 students per day.
This massive influx of students taking exams has both inundated the Testing Center and made testing more stressful for students.
“When I got in line to take my exam, I felt confident that I was going to do well on my test,” Braziel said. “I knew I had studied more than enough, and I wasn’t nervous. But after waiting in line for so long and seeing so many other students cram for their exams, I started to panic. I felt like I couldn’t focus.”
When asked why the Testing Center has been experiencing such long lines, O’Brien cited several factors, including record-breaking student enrollment numbers and the fact that many classes schedule their exams at this time in the semester. But the primary cause of the Center’s long lines, in O’Brien’s view, is what he dubbed a basic rule of human psychology: people like to get in lines.
“People getting ready for their exams get to Himes 30 minutes before their scheduled exam time. Then they see a bunch of people lined up outside and think, ‘Oh! I really need to get in line.’ And the cycle continues,” O’Brien explained. “Students get nervous that they’re going to miss their exams, so they get in line. And next thing you know we have a line backed up to the Quad.”
While he recognized that the long lines at Himes have been frustrating to many LSU students, O’Brien insisted that Testing and Evaluation Services is doing everything it can to streamline test taking.
“Our policies haven’t changed, and they do work,” O’Brien said. “We check one person in every 12 seconds and 130 people every 30 minutes. This is amazingly fast.”
As it stands, the Testing Center has announced no intention to expand its facilities or to change its testing policies. However, some students are convinced that something needs to change.
“Either LSU needs to start admitting fewer students or the Testing Center needs to expand,” Braziel contended. “These lines are terrible, and they’re only going to get worse during midterms and finals.”
If Tiger TV was right in describing the LSU Testing Center as “the place our GPAs go to die,” the lines emanating from Himes Hall are a stairway to heaven – or an ingress to hell. Testing is scary for everyone – freshmen and seniors, undergraduates and graduates, philosophy majors and accountants – and spooky season is upon us.
