Students who wish to drop classes now have an additional two weeks, after a proposal from last year’s Student Senate was approved.

While last semester, students had the first six weeks to decide whether or not to continue with a specific course, this fall semester, students have the first eight weeks of the semester to decide.

Thomas Conway, dean for Undergraduate Academic Program, said the main reason the drop date was extended from six weeks to eight weeks was to make programming the new student information system easier.

“Programming in two different drop dates was going to be exceedingly expensive to start with and for the most part, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.

He said the extra two weeks shouldn’t affect students very much since professors should be giving grades back within the first six weeks of classes anyway to enable students to assess their academic situation well before the deadline.

“Really, what this does is just change the deadline date so, if anything, there won’t be as many people dropping [classes] late,” Conway said.

According to Conway, the last time the drop date was modified was the mid 1990s when it was increased from four weeks to six weeks.

Conway said the undergraduate academic program is also trying to look at other institutional polices to determine what makes sense with the way the University operates.

Amber Joyner, a student senator and chair of the academic committee, said the extended drop date will allow students to get a better feel for their classes before they are forced to decide whether or not to stay in each class.

Joyner, a junior in political science and business management, said she knows a lot of math and finance exams don’t even take place until after the former drop date had already passed.

“It gives professors more time to give students significant assignments, and it allows students to get their grades back [before deciding],” she said.

T. Greg Doucette, Student Senate president, said having a later drop deadline allows professors to spread out their assignments instead of trying to cram them in before fall break, so students will have grades to assess their class status.

“[With the later deadline], students won’t be so stressed out and [will] hopefully perform better academically,” Doucette, a senior in computer science, said.

Last March, Student Senate passed a bill recommending the modification of the drop date to allow for better class assessment through more grades.

Doucette said once Student Senate passed the bill on March 14, the resolution went to Conway. He said Conway worked over the summer on the drop date issue.

“[Then], Amber Joyner met with him last week or the week before to get a status update on where we were on some of the issues,” he said.

According to Doucette, following that update meeting, Conway decided to go ahead and push the idea through.

Joyner said when the Student Senate passes a bill, it increases the chances that the administration will actually enact the bill.

“If it has the Student Senate’s support, then they look on that a little more favorably,” she said. “[It] gets results a little bit quicker that way.”