Weekly Calendars Blamed for Scheduling Inaccuracies

Author: Craig Szela

Several inadequacies of Middlebury College's dining table calendars, or table tents, including incorrect times, the repetition of or failure to print certain events and noticeable typos, have come to the fore.

Located primarily in the College's three dining halls, these calendars provide students with times and locations of major campus events.

College Scheduling Coordinator Peter Bouchard and his office are in charge of collating and printing the calendars. The event information is sent to his office by 13 different schedulers from different departments, including the Center for the Arts, the five commons, the Athletic Department and academic departments.

Bouchard said, "I know there were some events that were listed at an incorrect time," but added, "We always send a draft to all the schedulers." The schedulers then are supposed to inform his office of any typos so that those working in scheduling can correct them.

Administrative Assistant of Campus Activities and Leadership Tammy Grant said she often submits information for the calendar. "I've heard lots of complaints," she affirmed.

Students give her the information on their event information, and she sends this list to Scheduling where it is imported into a computer program. Grant said she then receives a draft and is able to alert Scheduling of typos. Nevertheless, she continued, "The revisions don't always happen."

The computer program cannot understand how an event can start one day and end the next, Bouchard explained. For example, when a dance party that starts at 9 p.m. and ends at 2 a.m. is entered into the program, the computer will change it to begin at 12 a.m. The dance party thus shows up only on the calendar scheduled for the morning that it ends.

The Scheduling Office can manually override the computer entries, but as Grant pointed out, "[they are] often so overwhelmed, they don't necessarily have the time to check them over." To avoid this she explained, "We put stop time of a dance party at 11:59 p.m." This clears up what day the dance party is, but often leads to confusion for students and especially for security guards who think the dance should end two hours earlier than it is supposed to.

For those looking to blame someone or something, the fault lies mostly with the poorly designed computer program. Nonetheless, it can be aggravating to students who for example have spent time organizing a symposium that is supposed to begin at 5 p.m. but is instead, according to the calendar, scheduled to begin at 12 a.m.

Another problem with the calendars is the amount of time required to submit event information to Scheduling. Students must send their event schedule to Grant by Wednesday afternoon of the week prior to when they want the information to appear on the calendar. Many students are not ready to submit their information that far ahead of time and therefore are unable to publish their event information in the calendar.

Despite these problems, the calendars are on the whole well received. Grant said she receives about one complaint a week because of typos, but during the two months last year when they were not printed, she received many more inquiries about their absence. This year Weybridge House has actually asked for its own copies of the calendars since its residents do not frequent the dining halls on campus.