More than 70 students packed into the Distance Education building on Nov. 30 at 1 p.m. to speak out against the school administrators’ potential plans to eliminate winter courses.
A pile of petitions signed by 3,600 students who wanted the college to keep the winter session was presented during the forum.
“Even with so much opposition, I wonder why this proposal keeps being brought up,” Jessica Lopez, Associated Students Organization president said. “The success rate and the retention rates prove that the winter session is the better session for students to excel in.”
Meg Palanqui, 20, anthropology major, said that the college will no longer ensure educational success for students if it removes the winter session.
“The El Camino College mission statement asserts that El Camino College offers comprehensive education programs and services to ensure educational success through a diverse community,” Palanqui said. “The college is here to serve students and ensure that success, which would not be possible by eliminating winter session.”
Jeannie Nishime, vice president of student and community advancement, explained to students and faculty members about why administrators were thinking about removing the winter session. Increasing the number of winter courses could keep students from enrolling in spring semester courses, Nishime said.
In future years, the college could attract more students from other universities if they have two summer sessions, rather than a summer and a winter session.
“The potential student recruitment efforts are greater in the summer,” Nishime said. “The other thing about the two back-to-back summer sessions that is so attractive, is that that it could be expanded to 12 weeks, which could be very advantageous for some programs. Also, it lends the opportunity to have a fast-track 14-month associate’s degree, which we think could be very attractive to some students who want to graduate quicker.”
Faculty members adamantly argued against this fast-track plan for an associate’s degree. Lars Kjeseth, math professor, said that the college has to come to grips with the excessively high number of maximum units in these short inter-sessions.
According to Kjeseth, each summer session would require students to work up to 75 hours per week.
“That doesn’t count sleeping. That doesn’t count eating,” Kjeseth said. “That is an absurdly high cap and to try to say that we’re going to create this 14-month A.A. degree based on those kinds of assumptions is highly irresponsible.”