Several opportunities are here for students to become informed of the policy decisions and concerns within the faculty, but how many of us actually take the time to attend the events and listen?

For the first time in the three semesters I have been coming to Sacramento State, I made the decision to sit in on my first Town Hall meeting. OK, so it wasn&t necessarily because I was interested, but rather a chance to gain extra credit for my journalism class.

However, after sitting in and listening to some of the faculty members& suggestions, I was outraged by what their vision of the future should look like.

Being one of many students who can maintain a full-time or part-time job, as well as a full-time class schedule I was stunned when one faculty member stood up and said that the standards for education are set too low.

Doesn&t sound too bad yet, right? She then proceeded to say that students who are working 40 hours a week should also be required to put in 40 hours of class time a week if they choose to maintain a full-time schedule 8211; basically stating that one credit should be worth three hours.

Do you know how unreasonable this sounds? An 80-hour workweek is ridiculous and unimaginable to even faculty members themselves. Sometimes I wonder if our professors forgot what it was like to be a student and work at the same time.

I think it is a fair assessment to say that we are trying as hard as we can to balance the needs and expectations of work, life and school, and packing on another 25-30 hours of class time a week is absurd.

As professors, I would think they would support the decision of students to advance their careers while also advancing their education, but I guess in the eyes of some faculty members, a 55-hour workweek just isn&t enough.

Setting aside my frustrations for a moment, I will support that three hours a week isn&t quite enough time to get the full grasp of the material, but I don&t think it has to do with the amount of time spent in the classroom.

One suggestion made by another faculty member was to decrease the size of the classroom in order to ensure the students get the needed attention to understand the material. This, by the way, was only one of few comments that actually benefited the students throughout the entire meeting.

Continuing on with more questions and answers from faculty, I was again blown away by a statement made by a professor of the Biological Sciences Department. This professor, in short, declared that there are two types of students: those who are advanced and those who are struggling.

I am aware that there are some who can make college work for them and some who seem to have a harder time getting by. But when this faculty member said that we can&t lower our standards to meet the needs of the strugglers, it made me wonder why this person was a teacher.

In my opinion, a teacher is there to help advance and progress the intelligence and work ethics of students, not condemn them for being less intelligent than their peers at the top of the class.

A second comment only added to my irritation. Struggling students should only be given one second chance and should be told that they need to make the best of it. Well, that&s just great. When a student is on a downward spiral in school, why not kick them a couple of times to make them try harder.

I agree that there is a limit as to how many chances a student gets, but my concern is that should this type of procedure be implemented, it will affect the students who truly are trying their hardest to succeed, not the ones who admit to giving up.

My advice to all students is to begin paying a little more attention to events such as this because there are a lot of decisions and suggestions being thrown around, that if implemented, will truly affect us in a negative way.