Around the eighth week of the quarter, Hyde Park starts to experience a specific type of stress. It’s evident in the Registrar’s office, in the lengthy pauses at 57th Street coffee lines, and in the way students begin checking the Registrar’s website in the same manner that others check the weather. Technically a dry administrative document, the final exam schedule takes on the characteristics of a contract, one that students believe both parties will uphold. They do most of the time. But not every time.
A quiet pattern has been present in some UChicago classrooms for years. Often with good intentions, a professor determines that the official exam time does not fit the course schedule. Perhaps they wish to free up time for reading. Perhaps they are on the road. Perhaps they’ve just been doing it this way for ten years. As a result, the final is pushed forward, sometimes into the final week of classes and other times into a Saturday that nobody had planned. Pupils take notice. They nearly always do. They are sometimes unaware that they are permitted to push back.
The College Council has been attempting to alter that aspect. In collaboration with the Office of Campus and Student Life and the Office of the Dean of Students, they developed a reporting system that, in reality, seems almost too straightforward. The time listed by the Registrar and the time announced by the instructor are compared by the student. They email their academic advisor if the two don’t match. It is passed up the chain by the advisor. The rest is handled by administrators, and the instructor never finds out whose name was attached. This is the part that students seem to find most comforting.
It’s difficult to ignore how meticulous the design is. Anonymity is important, particularly in a setting where students frequently spend several quarters in the company of a single professor. People who truly understood the social cost of speaking up in a small seminar seem to have created the system. The signal typically takes the form of an email to the entire class abruptly announcing that the final has been rescheduled to its correct time slot, rather than a direct confirmation of a resolution, which is the standard administrative discretion. You can tell it was successful because of this.
This does not apply to all exams. Essays, presentations, and take-home assignments fall under a separate category for asynchronous finals, where teachers typically have more latitude. The synchronous, scheduled exams that are meant to serve as the calendar’s anchor are the main focus of the reporting tool. Advisors are typically willing to listen to students who feel that a deadline has become burdensome rather than demanding.
The entire endeavor has a subtle sense of principle. This project reads almost like a defense of UChicago’s intellectual rhythm, which includes its reading period, study days, and quarterly cadence. Additionally, it shows a slight but significant change in how students view administrative authority. They are not advocating for simpler tests. They are requesting adherence to the current regulations.
It’s still unclear how long the system will last. Students must take action in order to report, and taking action necessitates having faith that the report will be significant. By most accounts, it has so far.
