The schedule at St. Louis U. High is demanding. That’s a major part of the SLUH experience, but it isn’t demanding for the sole purpose of being difficult. We are pushed hard to learn and grow to our fullest capabilities and our schedule should reflect that. The elimination of Studium from the first six full weeks of this year’s schedule hurts students' ability to learn and prevents them from establishing critical connections with teachers to start the year. 

Dr. Foy has said that the two main rationales for this change are as follows: students need to regain an understanding for how to use Studium, and to correct the schedule to end the semester on a G period.

We can clearly see the benefits of starting the school year off with five-period days. There’s a lot of merit to increasing the rigor and difficulty of SLUH’s academics in the first few weeks of school and encouraging students to establish good habits. The administration has also said that the removal of the beginning month of Studium allows for the ideal scheduling shift needed in order to end each semester on a G-period. 

The merits of these goals are apparent, but the removal of Studium was not necessary. Again, we agree with the logistical necessity of 5-period days, but Studium can coexist with this necessity. Rather, the first Advisory periods could have been delayed. But Advisory is not the topic of this commentary, instead we merely mean to discuss the important role Studium plays towards students’ success.

Part of the rationale for Studium’s absence was to create a more distinct difference between Activity Period and Studium. This does the opposite. The work which is intended for Studium is now taking place during Activity Period, displacing the club meetings and events for which the period was created. Instead of drawing a sharper contrast between the two periods, both are melded into one.

We also believe that removing something in order to make others appreciate it is a fundamentally flawed strategy. This type of punitive measure doesn’t foster appreciation, it alienates the administration from students and hurts SLUH’s academic mission.

Students need Studium. This time is crucial for managing SLUH’s famous workload and building the connections with teachers students need to succeed in their classes. Studium offers time to work through problems and questions you may struggle on before class, and it allows you to enter lessons prepared for the day’s challenges.  The absence of this time can leave students stranded before tests or quizzes, unable to meet with their teachers beforehand. 

We have personally run into this challenge, facing difficult homework problems, only to be quizzed on that material the next day without a chance to meet with our instructors to fully understand it. Last Wednesday, study guides were passed out for AP Calculus BC’s first test. Between then and the time the test was taken, there were no opportunities to meet with teachers to go over difficult problems. 

Furthermore, the timing of this decision is deadly, especially among upperclassmen. Many upperclassmen have had, or will have to, make a change to their course schedule at the beginning of the school year. The dropping of one class often reshuffles the entire set of classes, switching around teachers who often have different lesson plans.  

The lack of dedicated office hours provided by Studium means that these students have had to go into new classes blind. Aside from any information a student may have gotten from a teacher after emailing them (if they were lucky enough to have their email picked out amid the crush of emails in every teachers’ inbox), they have no safety net to save them from multiple days of missing work a teacher may have for them after moving to a new class.

Another aspect of this decision that upsets us and our peers, is the lack of wholesale student representation in considering this schedule change. The matter was only discussed from small groups of people in class council meetings, and despite largely negative feedback from the students the change was still put into place. 

The change also wasn’t announced formally; rather the information slowly filtered throughout our community, at least among students. During the writing of this piece, we just now learned that the first week after winter break will also feature five-period Advisory days with no Studium. The lack of official notification further distances those affected from sharing feedback.

As stated in last week's article about the Studium change, the decision was put into place by the Strategic Advisory Council, a group of administrators, directors, admissions personnel, and teachers. A few teachers were included in the process, but the input of the faculty at large was not considered. This is simply an administrative oversight. The people most affected by this decision are teachers and students, but their opinions largely were overlooked and disregarded. 

The primary issue is not with 5-period days, but rather the elimination of Studium. By removing Studium from the schedule, the decision has hindered student’s ability to build rapport with teachers and work through issues before class, blended together Activity Period and Studium, and disenfranchised students and teachers from important decisions affecting their academic success.