What’s needed is a lesson on time for midnight classes

By Emily Richmond

Published Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Updated Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010 | 8:52 p.m.

Students attending inaugural midnight classes at the College of Southern Nevada this week have faced their first test: Could they show up at the right time?

Turns out the course catalog’s “Tuesday 12 a.m.” start time for some classes was interpreted three ways by students. And it further turns out the college contributed to the confusion. Ditto for the Wednesday 12 a.m. classes.

CSN is offering midnight classes in its most popular subjects ­— biology, math, English, history, communications and psychology. Classes are on either a Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday schedule. (There were no classes on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.)

The college introduced confusion among students by how it listed the hours in the catalog. Let’s look at History 101:

The schedule says the class would be held “Tuesday/Thursday 12 a.m.-1:20 a.m.”

When do you think you should show up? Take a moment. Work it out in your mind.

You would be smart to show up late Tuesday night to get your parking spot; the class would begin at midnight, which is defined as the last moment of the day. The class would be dismissed at 1:20 a.m. Wednesday.

But some students who showed up Tuesday were actually enrolled in classes on the Wednesday/Friday schedule. They were 24 hours early.

The majority of the students showed up on time for the correct class the first night. But some of the confusion was repeated for classes later in the week, albeit on a smaller scale after CSN staff called dozens of students to make sure they knew the correct start times.

Faculty didn’t take roll the first week, there’s no way of knowing how many students were confused. Most of the classes were respectably crowded at the close of registration, with 17 to 24 students in each section.

K.C. Brekken, the college spokeswoman, said she met some students who were off by either 12 or 24 hours. They were good-natured about the error, she said.

“We definitely acknowledge there were some kinks,” Brekken said.

Students will be surveyed this semester to find out whether there is enough interest to continue offering midnight classes.

CSN also wants to know whether that is a preferred start time for some people, or if they enrolled by default because traditional classes were full.

Before this semester, CSN offered courses from 7:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

The first midnight class to fill up was Biology 189, a popular class that is also a prerequisite for several majors. There isn’t enough lab space on campus for additional sessions of the class during regular hours, Brekken said.

CSN offers more than 4,400 course sections, with 95 percent of them at capacity. General education classes are typically the most popular, and students are having the most difficulty finding open spots in math and science classes.

After concern arose about the clarity of the language in the registration paperwork, Brekken said she looked up “midnight” in the dictionary.

“The definition says ‘12 o’clock at night,’ ” Brekken said. “Some people might not call that 12 a.m.”

In fact, there’s a school of thought that midnight is neither a.m. nor p.m., but refers to the minute after 11:59 p.m. and before 12:01 a.m.

Signs were posted outside the classrooms where the midnight courses are being held — all in the same building — to alert students to the actual start time, and CSN expects “next week will be much clearer for the students,” Brekken said. “If we continue to offer midnight classes, we’ll talk about ways to make sure there’s no confusion about what that means.”