Your class has been cancelled

It's hard to miss the glorious new perimeter road we have at the south end of campus. Four lanes, smooth and generally straight, it certainly is an improvement over routing traffic adjacent to the University Union. It was built, our university president has said many times in the past two years, because of concerns about pedestrian safety.

I have a similar concern about safety -- but for the pedestrians who cross from the parking lot 2 to the Hornet bookstore, Riverfront Market and nearby classrooms. The road there is the same two bumpy lanes it was before we spent nearly $8 million to build the glorious new perimeter road. And there is still little enforcement of campus speed limits in that area. Pedestrians have to step lively to avoid drivers who missed the chapter in driver's training about who has the right of way. (If you park in the bookstore parking lot and safely cross the street both ways, you will discover that while pedestrians may rank low in the university's priorities, the Parking Police at least are frighteningly clear on their mission.)

Other than obvious safety matters, it's important for our university president's credibility that he orders his minions to deal with this because many faculty, students and staff simply don't believe pedestrian safety had anything to do with the decision to use voter-approved Proposition 203 monies (which on other campuses went for new classrooms and computer systems) to build the $8 million road.

I certainly don't.

But I could be persuaded that I misjudged the President's full-court press two years ago when the Faculty Senate held hearings on the perimeter road, and various administration spokesman spent their allotted time shouting, "Safety! Safety!" with fervency usually reserved for revivalists. If they were (and are) honestly concerned about the pedestrians campus, the road near the bookstore parking lot deserves attention. Perhaps a couple of those hardworking Parking Police could put down their automated ticket-writing machines long enough to direct traffic and slow down the river of fast-moving vehicles. One of those neat campus police squad cars could park in the bookstore lot and nab a few speeders to make a point. It might restore some faith in those who are cynically waiting for the name change on the perimeter road University Drive to Gerth Esplanade.

Some of the same cynics are also wondering if now that Gerth Esplanade (Oops! Sorry! University Drive...) has been completed, the university could turn its attention to a serious academic problem -- the cancellation of classes.

This year, as in recent years, schools and departments went through an orgy of course-cutting in the last weeks before school started in an attempt to pack the largest number of students into the smallest number of classes possible. The administration calls it efficient use of resources. Whether it has much to do with education is not the point here.

What is relevant is that after weeks of basking in the rosy glow of having CASPER confirm that a student has a set schedule, a panicked phone call comes from a department secretary or student assistant (neither of whom is paid enough to make these calls) saying that despite the reassurances the university gave when it cashed the student's check, the class the student registered for, around which the student built their work, transportation, financial aid and perhaps child-care schedule, that class is gone, cancelled, no longer offered, taken off the books. Poof!

If the students are lucky, there's at least a hint of remorse in that phone call. If they're lucky, the call comes a couple of weeks before the start of classes so they can begin the process of cajoling and groveling to work their way into another class, which quite, naturally, is overflowing. (Remember the largest number of students into the smallest number of classes.)

And of course even getting a phone call is a matter of chance -- the chance the class was offered by a department compassionate enough to spend some staff time to make notifications when a course is unceremoniously dumped at the last minute. Many departments simply wait and hang a sign on the classroom door where the class had been scheduled: Class Canceled.

If the university can spend $8 million to build a road, it should now be able to turn its attention to figuring out how to honor its commitments to students who registered and paid their fees in good faith.

Accomplish that, Mr. President, and maybe we can talk about changing the name of the road.

(Michael J. Fitzgerald is a journalism professor and former chair of the CSU, Sacramento Faculty Senate. He is currently a Statewide Academic Senator, representing the university.)