Campus insight

We are asking the administration to retain the winter session classes in the 2013 calendar. Since the mission statement of El Camino College is to offer “quality, comprehensive educational programs…to ensure the educational success of students,” it is unfair to the most motivated and successful students to eliminate winter classes without a two-year warning. Any counselor would remind us that educational plans are constructed with a two-year time span in mind, so the school calendar should also reflect this planning time span.

Full-time students, Honors Transfer Program students and science majors need the winter session that is currently approved for the 2012-13 calendar so they can complete ECC in time to transfer in fall 2013. Since most of them are well into their two- or three-year educational plans, it would be unfair to remove winter session classes at this point, with only ten months’ notice.

A substantial percentage of our honors students use the winter session to fulfill major course requirements that they cannot squeeze into the fall and spring semesters. Since many of these students are transferring to UCLA and UC Berkeley, they must have all their requirements finished by June of the year they transfer; therefore, summer courses do not work for them. Without the winter session next year, our transfer rates to UCs will plummet. This is also true of students transferring to Cal State Universities if they eliminate spring transfers.

The need for winter session also extends to science majors. As a science professor and faculty adviser of the Science Club, I can attest to the need for winter session for science students to take non-science general-education requirements. Many of them will not be able to finish next year if they don’t have a winter session. This would be bad for our transfer rates, as well as bad for students who already need at least three years here to complete all the science requirements.

Last year, the ASO and HTP students organized the largest petition in the history of the college to protest this decision.