Goodnight Sweetheart: Students Fall Asleep in Sections and Classes

When Noah S. Selsby '95 was an undergraduate, all-nighters and off-kilter hours were a fact of life.

As a head proctor of the first-year Ivy Yard, Selsby knows firsthand that students' sleep patterns are the same as ever.

"Things haven't changed since nine years ago when I was a freshman," he says. "People still stay up about the same amount of time."

"My sleeping patterns were very erratic," Selsby says. " It's fun--you're not at home any more, people want to stay up, talk to their friends. It's a part of college."

Harvard students have always had trouble getting enough sleep--and Trevor A. Bass's experience seems to be the trend.

"First semester, I would get about four or five hours of sleep during the week and walk around feeling really tired all day," says Bass, who is a first-year. "I would have gone to bed earlier, but I had so many things to do."

But what's changing is Harvard's response to students' sleepless nights.

The staff of University Health Services (UHS) encourages students to sleep regularly and often.

But as first-years quickly learn, with a crushing course load and more than 250 extracurricular options, sleep is often the last thing on the schedule.

Next year, however, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) plans to implement a nightly midnight snack--a sign that Harvard is moving toward a tacit acknowledgement of students' 24-hour lifestyle.

But even though change is in the air, not everyone thinks that shifting the College's hours to fit students' habits is necessarily the right idea. They have a simpler answer: an alarm clock.

"I don't want to stand up as a member of another generation telling the younger generation how to apportion their time," says Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson. "[But] I think it's sad if Harvard students change their schedules simply because of a cultural trend. They can stand up and say they want to set their schedule to maximize learning experience and maintain healthy bodies."

Late Late Night

As any fan of Animal House knows, college students don't keep an orderly schedule.

At Harvard, undergraduates may not be attending wild fraternity parties every day, but they tend to stay up late anyway. Unfortunately, their academic performance suffers, students say.

"My hours are really screwed up," says Alfa Tiruneh '03, who typically goes to bed between 3 and 5 a.m.

Her roommate is worse: she sleeps only "an hour or two" a night.

With such a late bedtime, Tiruneh says it is difficult to wake up and attend early classes. She says she regularly falls asleep during class.

"In 10 o'clock Ec 10, it's bound to happen," Tiruneh says.

Jacob A. Rubin '03, who was recently studying at Lamont Library past midnight, says he usually doesn't hit the sack until 3 a.m.

Rubin says he fights the temptation to nap during lecture.

"I think professors get offended when they see students fall asleep in class," he says.

Even eating loses priority when weighed against extra sleep.

"I eventually started skipping my 9 a.m. class," Bass says. "I also started eating lunch as my first meal."

Ask Your Doctor

Most students acknowledge the importance of a good night's rest, but few seem to take the need seriously.

"Sleep is a concern spanning all college students; it's one of the health issues students deal with," says Michael Hoyt, a health educator at UHS's Center for Wellness.

Neurologists are still baffled by how sleep operates within the body, or even what its exact function is.

But all agree that it is impossible to maintain proper mental and physical function without adequate rest.

The number of hours of sleep necessary varies between different individuals. On average, however, a teenager should sleep about nine hours nightly, says Dr. Helene A. Emsellem, a neurologist with the Sleep Disorder Center in Washington, D.C.

Only a tiny number of students get that much sleep on a regular basis. The problem is compounded when students skip meals to catch extra time in bed.

"I'm teaching people who look exhausted," says Professor of Latin Kathleen M. Coleman. "I'm concerned that these gifted students are not getting enough from their studies."

To try to encourage students to sleep more, UHS is raising the issue in its program of "mind/body" workshops, seminars and dorm outreaches.

Barbara Boothby, a registered dietician and program manager of nutritional services at UHS, says while sleep deprivation is clearly detrimental to students' health, odd hours are another health concern.

She points to the negative effects of skipping breakfast, for example.

"They need more nutrition than two meals a day," Boothby says. "Lack of sleep and proper nutrition leads to fatigue and increased susceptibility to illness."

Using caffeine pills to stay awake and eating junk food late at night are additional trouble spots, Boothby says.

And while late-night establishments like Tommy's House of Pizza and the Hong Kong restaurant remain perennial favorites for sleepless students, they are hardly the most nutritious choices.

Milk and Cookies?

Enter the so-called fourth meal.

In December, HUDS announced that it would serve a nighttime snack in undergraduate dining halls starting next fall. Not quite a meal--bagels, vegetable slices, nachos and the like--but enough to sustain students through their all-nighters.

"I don't want to call it a fourth meal--it's really more of a break, along the lines of the late-night snacks we have available during reading period and finals,'' says HUDS spokesperson Alexandra E. McNitt.

The plan was crafted after extensive student surveys last year showed that undergraduates wanted a meal option after the end of dinner at 7:30 p.m. The snacks will be set out at the end of dinner and collected the following morning--allow students the option of munching all night long.

The menu is still undecided, since HUDS is looking for cost-effective choices, McNitt says.

"We haven't quite designed the program yet," McNitt says. "There is a cost implication to every nuance of the situation, and we're hoping for something that doesn't break our budget or your wallet.''

The proposal was widely approved by administrators and Faculty members, who believe it offers students a safer alternative than going to Harvard Square late at night.

"I don't want students out at the wee hours of the morning getting that necessary cup of coffee," says Winthrop Master Hanson.

But some are concerned that the fourth meal will exacerbate the problem of students staying up too late.

"A fourth meal only perpetuates the idea of students going to bed later and later," Coleman says.

Waking Up

Coleman raised the issue of students' sleep patterns at a December meeting of the joint student-faculty Committee on College Life. Students who attended the meeting say Coleman's 20-minute remarks on sleep touched off a lively debate in the meeting.

"I have sympathy for students when I see their eyes closing while they are trying to pay attention," she says.

Coleman urged undergraduates to be more aware of the dangers of exhaustion and take steps to protect their health.

"If I'm teaching at 9 a.m., I know I've got to get to bed by 11 p.m.," Coleman says. "Every student should take responsibility for his or her schedule"--even by abstaining from social engagements.

"Staying up late is a cultural fad," she says. "People don't need to."

In the meeting, Hanson also argued that students should take control of their schedules like most adults do.

"When students get that diploma they are entering a world where people get up and go to work by five or six," he says.

But many students said the problem lies elsewhere.

Daniel E. Fernandez '03, a member of the committee who was present at the December meeting, says that most students supported the idea of a fourth meal.

One student proposed scheduling classes later, but Hanson disagreed.

"The problem is with students not being able to get up at 11, and the fact that teachers don't want to start at 2 p.m.," Hanson says. "The result is less class choices."

Although most students dislike them, 9 a.m. classes may even be on the upswing soon.

A 1998 report of the Faculty Classroom Committee acknowledges that "many students will not enroll in courses or sections scheduled at that hour; some faculty members refuse to teach at 9 a.m."

But those concerns are overruled by a classroom crunch which could mean even more early classes in the future.

"The Core office and other academic departments should follow the example of science departments by offering more lecture courses at 9 a.m.," the report states.

Going to Bed

Additional 9 a.m. classes could make the collective sleep deficit worse, despite Harvard's efforts to address the problem.

Projects like the midnight snack might help students stay healthy during the hours they already keep.

But ultimately, administrators say, the answer is basic: if students don't want to be tired, they just need to go to bed.

"I think there's no moral ambiguity to waking up past noon," Selsby says. "It's all within reason."

"When it becomes intrusive, that's a problem," he adds. "I try to convince my students not to pull all-nighters. It's not worth it."