Sacramento State students should plan on attending Friday classes come fall 2002.

Maybe.

President Donald Gerth?s final class schedule plan, outlined in a memo last week, cobbles together proposals from Associated Students, Inc. and the Faculty Senate as well as input from the seven college deans. It also contains elements of his original plan to mandate Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes, a decision that touched off charges that Gerth failed to appropriately consult with students and faculty before ordering sweeping schedule changes.

Gerth said that as he listened to everyone, a theme kept coming up in conversations.

“We have 80 percent of students on campus who work. That is a major variable,” Gerth said. “The deans, Associated Students, the faculty, everyone said they needed a plan that would work for working students.”

That new plan calls for three-unit lecture courses starting between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. to run 50 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Gerth?s Oct. 1 mandate called for the same format, but spread it from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Communication Studies Department Chairman Val Smith sounded like a good soldier after Gerth announced the new plan.

“The president has made his decision,” Smith said. “Now it?s time for everyone else to get in and make it work.”

The schedule blueprint leaves flexible scheduling in place for all other hours and days of the week, a nod to ASI?s proposal to keep the current system for the benefit of working students.

“President Gerth took our concerns into consideration,” said ASI Press Secretary Janus Norman. “This new plan won?t have as harsh an effect on working students. Overall, we?re satisfied.”

And, Norman added, Gerth?s compromise legitimizes student government as a player in campus policy.

“He won?t make a decision like that again without consulting us,” Norman said.

Unlike before, the hybrid schedule will not run on autopilot. Gerth?s memo also establishes a “university work group” ? an idea hatched by the Faculty Senate last month ? to monitor class schedules and facility usage. The Vice President of Academic Affairs will organize the group to evaluate this new schedule format in two years.

“This approach is important … particularly at a time when responsible higher education institutions seek flexible scheduling to provide greater access for those who want to be students,” the memo reads.

Gerth originally proposed the schedule change in October as a measure of reducing classroom overcrowding. Students and faculty protested, saying they had not been included in the President?s decision-making process.The decision was eventually postponed so Faculty Senate and ASI could discuss and present alternative plans to the President.

Gerth set early November deadlines for both groups to present alternative solutions.

In a poll taken in early October by The State Hornet, 83 of 104 students said they didn?t think the three-day format would alleviate classroom overcrowding.