No matter what President Donald Gerth does regarding his decision to cancel Monday-Wednesday classes, he will end up looking politically weak. Setting final deadlines for student and faculty input and then extending them is what Gerth is presently doing. He apparently sees this as his best option. Unfortunately for Gerth, he may be right.

What other choice does Gerth have? If he stuck to the deadline he originally set (Oct. 24), he would have been rightly accused of not hearing students? opinions. So he responded by trying to appear lenient, but instead he has only succeeded in enlarging the target on his chest.

Gerth is screwed no matter what he does at this point, with or without sticking to the final deadlines he set. This is because he blew it right from the start, and now he is backpedaling faster than a straight guy who accidentally wanders into Faces.

He looked foolish when he said Oct. 24 was the last day to stop the runaway train that is the Monday-Wednesday schedule change, before changing the deadline to mid-November. My guess is that his plan to scrap the current scheduling won?t be final by his next deadline either. So why doesn?t Gerth just come out and say, “I am postponing a decision on the matter until further notice”? At least then he would stop the circus and let administration and Associated Students, Inc. concentrate on other matters. This seems to be Gerth?s only way out of the situation, since all other avenues appear to be littered with obstacles that can trip him up.

What happens if, come Nov. 16, nothing else has been accomplished? Then statements that Gerth makes on this matter will have lost all weight. But worse yet for Gerth, what if something is decided? Assuming ASI will not cave in next week and let Gerth have his way, he will then have to deal with an unflattering reality. He tried to take a strong stand on something and ram it through the process only to be embarrassed and corrected by a bunch of students one-fourth his age.

Whether or not the Monday-Wednesday scheduling idea is beneficial for the campus doesn?t seem to matter any more. It has become a power struggle between our student government and our president, both of whom are now trying desperately to appear like they are looking out for students. The issue has left both Gerth and ASI digging for a chance to save face, and the more deadlines Gerth postpones, the better ASI looks. The delays give ASI confidence that they are accomplishing something. Gerth, however, has nobody to make him look better.

The situation that our president has found himself in is unenviable, and further delays will be his way of admitting that he blew it from the very beginning. But it may be all Gerth can do until he actually has to make a real decision, and the deadline is coming up fast ? like that means anything.