Most people look forward to Thursday nights. College students in particular typically celebrate the occasion every week, as only one day of classes remain between them and the weekend. But on some rare instances, Thursday delivers a special treat to coeds: football under the lights.
    Thursday, October 19, 2006 marked one of the few highlights of the Virginia football season. On that day, the Cavaliers defeated the University of North Carolina Tar Heels by a score of 23-0. The game marked a few “seconds” for Virginia on the season: the second shutout victory (the Cavs previously defeated Duke 37-0 in Durham), the second game televised nationally on ESPN (a month earlier, the Cavs lost to Georgia Tech), and the second home win of the season (Virginia beat Wyoming 13-12 in overtime in Charlottesville on the second Saturday of the season).

photo by Andy Bunch

    But, this game was also a first for many at UVA: a Thursday night game at home. The electricity was noticeable, but the attendance was not as high as the previous home games. The reason for this? Not a lack of student interest in the game, as per the school-wide excitement heading into the game. In reality, what led to the lower turnout was that there was class that night, and/or work to do for the next day.
    Those students who attended the game witnessed Virginia’s best win of the season. For many, however, attendance may have come with a tinge of regret as they returned home to a pile of work that needed to be done for the next day. Some even felt it a week later when their professors reamed them for skipping their weekly discussion section in order to see the game.

    This begs the question: should the university’s educational priorities take a backseat to athletics one night of the year for a nationally-televised Thursday night football game? Or, similarly, should professors change their syllabi to accommodate students’ desires to go watch the game? Virginia students are torn on this issue.  Some, such as first-year student Matt Winter, feel that skipping a class is tolerable only if the student accepts the consequences, and does not expect any special treatment from teachers.     

“I think students should be able to go to the game and not be punished, but it is their responsibility, not the professors, to make sure they keep up with their work

I think students should be able to go to the game and not be punished, but it is their responsibility, not the professors, to make sure they keep up with their work

    “I think students should be able to go to the football game,” first-year student Zach Pisecki said.  “Football games are a large part of the college experience, and professors should be willing to postpone their classes or assignments on nights of football games. The number of students that attend football games is so large that few students want to go to class on such nights.”    

    What brings about this discrepancy in opinions is the conflict between two prideful elements of being a renowned university: academic prowess versus athletic dominance.  Virginia’s athletic slogan, as seen on posters and television commercials, is “Uncompromised Excellence.” In order to be an athletic powerhouse, a school needs not only the athletes and the coaching, but also the fan base. The most successful programs – see University of Florida, Michigan University, and Ohio State University, for example – have packed houses for football and basketball games each time the teams take the field or court.  However, there is a balance at a school such as UVA which demands both athletic success AND academic prestige: a school does not get ranked as the second best public university in the nation by allowing its students to slack during sports seasons.  While the main focus of the debate may be whittled down to whether skipping one class or assignment is permissible, there may be bigger powers at stake: for the athletic department, revenues from athletic events or recruiting athletes based on fan turnout at big games; for students (thinking long term), job placement which may be affected by GPA (which is affected by class grades); for teachers, changing one element of a syllabus may throw off the entire semester, and students may be unprepared for class which also hinders the overall learning process.    

    For these reasons, the faculty members at UVA are split in their mentalities.  Some teachers are willing to move their classes or extend their deadlines due to unusual situations, such as Thursday night football.  Still, one must consider how such a decision would affect the lives of teachers who need to be on-Grounds during the week – as teachers are quick to remind students, the lives of undergraduates are far less structured than those of faculty members – or how this disrupts academic procedures in other ways. Graduate student and English professor Richard Gibson explains more fully how midweek events impact the university and faculty:    

    “My experience--as a graduate student and an instructor--has been wholly negative on these Thursdays,” Gibson said.  “My parking spot has been granted temporarily to someone else… Traffic (on foot and on the road) has me sitting or standing idly for upwards of an hour I would otherwise have used for my efforts as a teacher or researcher…the educational values and commitments which I seek to instill in my students are undermined by the very University that has encouraged me to practice them and teach others to do so, too.

My experience--as a graduate student and an instructor--has been wholly negative on these Thursdays,” Gibson said.  “My parking spot has been granted temporarily to someone else… Traffic (on foot and on the road) has me sitting or standing idly for upwards of an hour I would otherwise have used for my efforts as a teacher or researcher…the educational values and commitments which I seek to instill in my students are undermined by the very University that has encouraged me to practice them and teach others to do so, too.

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