QUChronicle.com November 19, 2014 Volume 84 Issue 13
SPORTS All in the family, page 16
Student hockey tickets sell in record time
OPINION
ARTS & LIFE
Work, succeed, be happy, page 6
Breathing easier, page 9
Smaller budgets, fewer classes 52
percent of 200-level or higher English classes listed in the 2014-15 course catalog are actually offered
50
percent of 200-level or higher biology classes listed in the 2014-15 course catalog are actually offered
62
percent of 200-level or higher history classes listed in the 2014-15 course catalog are actually offered
71
percent of 200-level or higher FVI classes listed in the 2014-15 course catalog are actually offered
DESIGNED BY HANNAH SCHINDLER
CAS cuts courses for spring 2015, class sizes increase CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO
By TARA O’NEILL Staff Writer
Within 40 minutes, student tickets for the Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey games against Colgate University on Nov. 7 and Cornell University on Nov. 8 were sold out, according to Executive Director of the TD Bank Sports Center Eric Grgurich. “It’s the quickest the tickets have gone for it not being a QU-Yale game,” Grgurich said. “They went in about 40 minutes for both games. And it’s really been that way all season long.” Grgurich said student tickets have sold out within 24 hours over the past year and a half. But once the Colgate and Cornell tickets were available, he said he was surprised to see the tickets sell out in less than an hour. Many students said they noticed an increase in ticket sales and games selling out quickly ever since the men’s ice hockey team reached the national championship in 2013. At the start of the men’s ice hockey season, Grgurich said there were 1,000 student tickets available. Since the Cornell game on Nov. 15, they increased the amount of student tickets to 1,200. Grgurich said they intend to keep it at that number. But this increase in student tickets is not an extension of the student section. Grgurich said a standing room ticket does not guarantee a seat. Students with standing room tickets can stand anywhere in the arena, as long as they are not blocking doorways or stairs to get to seats. “The turnout has been fantastic,” he said. “We want to get the most amount of students in the arena that we can.” The reputation of the men’s ice hockey team paired with tickets selling out in record times has prompted several students to want the university to expand the student section. Senior health science studies major Chris Caruso is one of many who want more seating for students at hockey games. “The atmosphere of the student section is great,” Caruso said. “On most nights, the whole section is on their feet, cheering the team on. But it’s very difficult to find a seat unless you go to the game incredibly early.”
By NICOLE HANSON and SARAH DOIRON
With decreases in course budgets and sections, the sizes of classes are growing, especially in the College of Arts and Sciences. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Robert Smart said various classes have been cut across campus because the university can no longer fund them. “It was getting harder and harder to explain to the rest of the campus why [CAS] was running so many sections with small numbers of students,” Smart said. Two years ago, a course in CAS could run if it had at least 10 students enrolled in the section. However, Smart said a class now has to have at least 12 students to run. “We just can’t afford it anymore,” Smart said. “It has focused attention on the fact that we have to plan more carefully.”
Smart said average class sizes in CAS have been increased from 16 to 18 students this year to reduce the number of sections offered. He says this number is low compared to state schools, who increased from 30 to 35 students in each course. “The hope was to make sure we were keeping these sections reasonably full and not having very small sections taught by adjuncts,” he said. “[That way] we would have enough money to teach classes that are important for majors and minors.” Although Smart says the university aims to keep class sizes under 20 students, adjunct English professor Marianna Vieira is still concerned for the First-Year Writing Program. “If the class sizes go up to over 25 students I don’t know how this program is going to run,” she said. “You can’t do this kind of work with that many students. We used to have 15 students
Marquis Barnett overcomes adversity, finds solace at Quinnipiac.
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maximum in our classes and because of the editing and time needed to work on essays, we need smaller classes.” Smart said, ideally, all classes should have a small number of students. “If we never had to worry about money we would run all of our classes with only 10 students in them, but that isn’t the real world unfortunately,” he said. Smart said at one time CAS had 91 freshman English courses available, but this year the department cut down to 81 available freshman sections. By adding two students to each section, the department cut eight of the sections. The freshman class is also smaller this year than the Class of 2017, so the department could cut two additional sections. Ten 200-level or higher English classes
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