Shutdown has small effects on classes

Geology professor Drew Coleman’s first-year seminar class was looking forward to exploring national parks in the Mammoth Lakes area of California — until last week.

Because of the lapse in government funding due to the shutdown that has closed all nonessential federal agencies — including the national park system — some professors, such as Coleman, have had to restructure their course content.

Coleman said he is doubtful his class will be able to visit Yosemite National Park and Devils Postpile — two usual staples of the trip — because the shutdown might not end by the start of fall break on Oct. 16.

The class is still planning on visiting other rock sites in the area, but Coleman said he was disappointed that his students might not see the parks.

“People want to go to the national parks, and I’m sure that my students are no exception,” Coleman said. “Maybe one of the reasons they signed up for the course was to go to Yosemite and that seems to be in genuine jeopardy.”

The shutdown, which closed down all nonessential federal agencies on Oct. 1, will last until lawmakers agree on a budget.

Chris Roush, a journalism professor, said the shutdown would affect his economics reporting class if it persists.

He said his students were supposed to write a story Wednesday using trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau website, which is currently out of service.

Depending on how long the shutdown lasts, Roush said he might have to restructure his course to teach non-government-related content earlier than he anticipated.

“It’s a pain for me to have to go check the website every day to see if the data’s all there and to see if I can teach that topic the next day,” he said. “But for people who get government benefits it’s probably a bigger deal.”

Professor Joe Bob Hester teaches a media planning class, and he said he could not access census data to show his students the relationship between demographics and sales.

“It’s just a website, and so the fact that the website is not up even though they don’t need somebody sitting there is particularly annoying,” he said.

Coleman said he was given money to buy a $650,000 piece of equipment used for dating rocks, but that funding is now on hold.

“I’ve got to explain to the people with whom I’m negotiating that I’ve got the money but I don’t really have the money. It’s embarrassing,” he said.

Coleman said many other UNC professors rely on federal funding and have also been stalled by the shutdown.

Coleman said he hopes his students will still be able to visit Yosemite during fall break, but he is not sure Congress will pass legislation in time for the deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

“The Oct. 17 deadline looms and I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll have the sense to fix things before then,” he said.

Senior Julia Hochberg is in Hester’s journalism class and said the disruption to class was only a minor inconvenience.

But she said she was surprised that the government shutdown impacted one of her classes at all.

“To be honest, we laughed about it because nobody expected it to affect any of us,” she said.

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