Don’t extend College hours

It appears that the College has yet again taken a somewhat narrow-minded view on their latest venture, extending the working day for not only the students, but the staff as well. Forget the fact that they will have to ask staff to work longer hours, which might be a whole other bag of problems, but the change to the timetable would eat into the already limited hours available for extra-curricular activities, in particular sports.

Although some might find Imperial’s location within London an advantage, for the sports teams it can be a big problem, especially those who need large open spaces to practice. Even though Hyde Park is across the road and there is a public area for playing sports, I somewhat doubt that the general public would appreciate having 50 or so rugby players running up and down the grass, shredding the ground to pieces. Nor would they probably appreciate Lacrosse players flinging their balls around whilst children try to play peacefully in the park (yes I do realise how dirty that sounds). On top of that, we would need to find room for the footballers. In short, although Hyde Park would be an ideal location, it is not possible to have the teams there, which is why they train out at Harlington.

That in itself is a problem; the sheer distance to the grounds and the added costs of transport has meant that some of the sports teams have the highest budgets and travel expenses of the clubs and societies at Imperial. Take a typical training session, which would last 90 minutes or so. If you leave the Union at 18:00, you would not get back to the Union until close to 22:00, then you still have to get home. Training during the lunch hours would be a possible solution, but again there is the problem of using Hyde Park and the fact that humanities run during lunch. There simply isn’t enough time, nor enough space, for all the outdoor sports teams to train at Harlington. Some have moved their training sessions to other grounds, some have moved them to Tuesday nights, but for most, having a big training session the night before a BUCS game on a Wednesday is just not feasible.

So what are the other options? Well you could train on a Thursday, but as already mentioned, this is the day after a game, not the ideal time to improve on your performance for the following weeks game. Friday night? Well we all know that just won’t be a popular decision for the players! Extending the College hours to 19:00 on a Monday and Thursday will just make it that much more difficult for sports teams to function effectively.

There are some clubs that have tried training on a Saturday, however, for most, Saturdays and Sundays are when University of London (ULU) games are played. For the indoor teams, these games are also played on a Monday night! Yes, although sports such as netball, badminton and squash don’t have to travel that far to get to their training sessions, it means that having ULU fixtures on a Monday evening are feasible. Extending the hours would have a huge impact on the timetabling of these fixtures, especially if you have to travel to Royal Holloway.

The simple argument for the sports teams would have to be that extending the hours to 19:00 would be detrimental to the effective running of their club and by extension, the experience of the students whilst at University. Players already struggle to find enough hours to complete their work and fit in all the training without taking out an extra hour in the evenings – which, if the College were so determined to go ahead with, would leave them with only one viable alternative; an early start during the week. But how many people are actually going to make it to a 08:00 lecture, staff included?