Lot's Wife Edition 2 2016

STUDENT
Beware
the
night
(exams)
by Jessica Stone &
Daniel-Ffrench-Mullen
For us at the MSA Education (Academic Affairs) department,
Monday the 14th of March was a D-Day of
sorts. That morning, a global email was sent out by the
Monash Examination Services to inform students that
this year, at Monash University we will have night exams.
We spent a long time on StalkerSpace that day responding
to a myriad of comments showcasing a wide variety of
opinions on the changes. Now that the dust has settled,
we think it’s worth outlining what the situation is and why
the MSA is opposed to the introduction of night exams.
What’s actually going on?
Here are the basics of night exams: instead of the
normal two exam sessions per day at Caulfield Racecourse,
we will now have three. This third session (the night
session) will begin at 6pm and finish (ideally) at 8:10pm.
It will only be for two hour exams and Monash has stated
that no one will get three in one day. Nor will anyone get
a night exam and then a morning exam the very next day.
We don’t as yet know if you can have a three hour exam
in the afternoon session and then a night exam or some
other soul/gpa destroying combination.
Why is this happening?
Monash say that night exams are being implemented
due to overcapacity. Since the cap on places at universities
was removed by the federal government in 2009 (in
full in 2012) enrollment numbers have steadily increased.
As such, there are more exams that need to be held at
the end of each semester, and Monash says they’ve now
reached the ceiling for the normal exam period. So now
that Monash can’t fit more exams into the normal exam
arrangements, something needs to give. Of course we entirely
understand that Monash has to do something about
the exam ceiling; we’re not unreasonable people. But we
believe that making students sit exams at 6pm is not the
right solution.
So why does the MSA oppose this?
There are three primary reasons we’re against the introduction
of night exams. They come down to transport,
safety and concentration.
Transport: Monash University is not an American
College where everyone lives in dorms. Nor is Melbourne
a small European university town where everyone and
everything is nice and compact. It’s a sprawling behemoth,
with suburbs stretching over 50km from the CBD, and
public transport is not up to scratch. Many students take
huge routes of connecting buses, trains and even trams to
get to uni each day, and for some it takes over two hours.
So straight away, making students who are getting out of
an exam past 8 o’clock travel two hours to get home is a bit
harsh. Now maybe that wouldn’t be a big deal for some if
all services were still running, but again this is Melbourne:
they’re not. Most buses stop around 9pm. So if you get on
a train from Caulfield station around 8:30, take a trip that’s
over thirty minutes and then have to get a bus to get within
walking distance of your house, you’re probably going to be
left in quite a pickle, to say the least. Now for those of you
reading this now and thinking, “But heaps of uni students
go out at night and have to deal with the same transport
issues anyway,” that’s true but there’s a difference between
having to pay for a taxi home after you’ve decided to go
out drinking, and having to pay for a taxi/suffer because
Monash forces you to sit a night exam. It’s about who
should bear responsibility: night exams are not a student’s
choice so it’s shouldn’t be their responsibility to ensure that
they can easily get home, and Monash can’t change the fact
that many won’t be able to.
Safety: There are more issues than just whether your
bus runs at night, unfortunately public transport is not
always a safe way of travelling, particularly at night. In fact
crime on public transport has increased in recent years.
Again, even though many students go out at night in their
own time, we feel that when the university is making a
decision that will impact students, it is their responsibility
to ensure students’ safety. We know Monash would like to
make it safer for students if they could, but they just can’t.
And so despite good intentions, night exams simply can’t be
done safely.
Concentration: A lot of people have stated in our
survey that they would struggle to concentrate at that time
of day, particularly if they’ve had an exam earlier that same
day. Even if you’re a night owl, think about it like this: the
night exam time slot is dinner time. Think about how many
people are going to be writing with one hand and noisily
eating with the other, and that’s just plain annoying.
What now?
Whether you think we’re on the money, or completely
out of touch, we want your opinion.
Please fill out our survey on night exams by visiting
the ‘MSA Education’ page on Facebook.
And please feel free to contact the Education
(Academic Affairs) Department at
daniel.ffrench-mullen@monash.edu and/or
jessica.stone@monash.edu
Lot’s Wife | 13