As a freshman myself, I hate to admit it but only three days into our semester and I'm fed up with the schedule. This is a petition created collectively by SVAD's freshmen and not one single body is involved behind this. Every single freshman, signed or not signed, has agreed that our schedule is reaching to limits not known before. Therefore this petition has been created in order to raise awareness towards our concerns as we were effectively shut off by our faculty at our first attempt of voicing our complaints.

First of all, we are given a 6 hour class with a 45 minute break everyday for our foundation year. I am well aware so are you, the reader, of the commotion and amount of rush on campus inside the cafe and other areas during our break and it is next to impossible to get our food, sit down, eat, replenish ourselves and get ready for the next 3-4 hours in 45 minutes. The five minute pehlay rule applies here as well, so technically we get a break of 40 minutes in a day with a class that runs for roughly 6 hours. As a means of gathering attention, we are repeating this again. The campus cafe is filled to the brim with students to such a degree that it is impossible for a SVAD student to buy their food, sit down, eat and replenish themselves all within the 40 minutes. This petition aims to bring awareness to this problem and asks on behalf of all SVAD freshmen to change and lengthen our break time to a minimum of an hour and a half as to allow us to recharge our battery and peacefully have our break and lunch, as opposed to rushing everywhere trying to get everything done within 45 minutes which as I said earlier, is next to impossible. As a result of this short break, most of us are not able to eat our food and we are left to fend for ourselves if we arrive even 5-10 minutes late to our class regardless of whatever excuse we have.

Secondly, the newly introduced "English Course" being held on Saturday is bizarre due to its length. After spending five days, a total of 30 hours in class and a measly 2.25 hours of break time, a 9 AM-1 PM English class on Saturday is absolutely abhorrent considering the back-breaking time we spend in our foundation classes. This petition also aims to request to divide our compulsory English course into 1 hour classes everyday to make it more manageable instead of taking away our Weekend to rest as well. Furthermore, this petition also aims to voice concerns as to why this course is mandatory even for students whose English can be considered as a first language, it does not make sense for a student with high proficiency in English to be sitting for 5 hours every Saturday in an English class learning the same things they learnt about the language since they were kids. We request that the faculty must dissolve those 5 hours into the weekday as to give us the liberty of meeting family and friends on our only two free days we get on the weekend.

This petition is in no means an attack to the faculty, we are grateful for BNU, the VC and SVAD's efforts to make these 4 years the best years of our life. However, even though it's been only 3 days, if it continues like this then students are not only going to be burnt out faster than ever, they will eventually decline in their studies. We humbly request BNU, the VC and SVAD to take this petition into consideration and make the requested changes to our schedule as to provide us with the best possible timings as well as having our freedom and will to do as we please with our two days off on the weekend.

As obvious as it is, some of us have our families waiting to see us and to spend time with them as well as friends, this schedule only prevents students from having a good work-life balance and goes against some of BNU's values. In addition, we even have SVAD hostilities who visit their home city on the weekends, and this extra class on Saturday disrupts their work-life balance. Just because this is a university and we are at the next stage of our education, it doesn't mean we have to be slaves to our degree. As we are aware, other schools within BNU has a much more lenient schedule, with some having atleast an hour or more of a break so it does not make sense why SVAD foundation year students are handed the most back-breaking and hectic schedule.

As the ending comment, we humbly request whoever is reading to sign this petition in order to bring about change because even though it has only been 3 days since the semester started, if this issue stays unresolved, it will become much worse than it already seems to be.

Regards,

A SVAD freshie