The decongestion of the TF-5 motorway does not go through delaying the start of classes. That is what the majority of the faculties of the University of La Laguna (ULL) maintain, which reject the extra financing announced by the Cabildo de Tenerife for centers that agree to start teaching at ten in the morning, since they do not consider that this is the solution for the long traffic jams that occur every day at the entrance to the metropolitan area of Tenerife. It is true that mobility problems occur and it is true that, in part, they are caused by the huge number of people who travel to this point on the Island to work and study at the ULL, but the university community considers that the answer is in promoting sustainable mobility and improving existing infrastructures.
The Cabildo de Tenerife announced that it would contribute an extraordinary ten million euros per course -as of 2023/2024-, and for two years, for those faculties that decided to delay their class schedule and start at ten in the morning. However, the proposal has not been well received by the centers or by the students. In fact, this idea comes late since the faculties are these days making their schedules for the next course and the ULL Governing Council already approved on Monday the academic calendar for 2023/2024, which will begin on September 11.
For now, the Faculty of Health Sciences is the only one that could modify its schedules to delay the start of classes at ten in the morning. But only for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd years of Medicine. The rest of the years of this degree, as well as the Nursing and Physiotherapy careers -which share spaces in the surroundings of the University Hospital Complex of the Canary Islands- would maintain their usual hours. This was announced by the rector of the ULL, Rosa Aguilar, who explained that the proposal from the Cabildo de Tenerife reached the institution a few weeks ago “but during the course we cannot make any changes and that is why we are addressing the proposal now, when we are preparing the schedules for the next course”. In any case, she advanced that the decision does not depend on the institution as a whole but on the different centers, which have the capacity to decide regarding their schedules. “But the reality is that most of the faculties have morning and afternoon hours, which makes it difficult to delay the start of classes and, furthermore, there is not enough space to unfold the lessons even more,” concluded the rector, who nevertheless stated that “we tried to help solve this problem, to the best of our ability.” “Our biggest handicap is that we do not have enough space to be able to combine schedules, as would happen if classes started at 10 in the morning” and he recalled that “that is precisely why we have morning and afternoon hours, to be able to give a better use of our resources, and our hours are already staggered.
The rector thus showed her intention to collaborate to solve the problem of traffic jams on the motorway and confirmed that “we will help whenever we can, and even if there was no money on the table”. In this sense, different heads of the faculties were against the measure proposed by the president of the Cabildo, since they consider that the idea of financing the delay of classes is totally electoral.
The dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Javier Medina, thanked “the interest of the institutions in trying to solve mobility problems on the Island” but recalled that the solution includes many factors, and not only the ULL. In the case of this faculty, “we have already approved the schedules for the next course”, so this measure could not come into force as of September. The dean expressed that different proposals have been made beforehand to be able to delay the face-to-face arrival of students at the ULL, such as offering the first two school hours with virtual classes, but he insists that “we are a face-to-face university.” “The organization of the territory is a matter that has been kicking for years and I understand that the Cabildo wants to find a solution, but the ULL is not entirely to blame,” he concluded.
María Ángeles Alonso is the dean of the Faculty of Psychology and he was blunt: “The traffic jams that occur at the entrance to Santa Cruz every day are not caused by the students of the University.” The dean explained that faculties such as the one she directs cannot change their schedules because the delay in the morning shift would also affect the afternoon shift and she refuses to allow students to leave class at eleven at night. In addition, she recalled that at that time, the Guajara General Lecture Hall, where Psychology teaches some of her classes, is not even open. Regarding the promise of greater financing for those faculties that delay the start of their classes, she assured that “not even with those”. That money is not enough to expand the Lecture Hall, nor to hire more professed who can guarantee to teach when the morning and afternoon hours overlap. “I regret that the financing of the public university depends on us changing our schedules,” she summarized.
The dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alfonso Ruiz Rallo, highlighted his “intention to collaborate” but recognized that “we frankly find it difficult to change the schedules” since he considers it a priority that his students can combine class attendance with other activities during the afternoon. “I think that in Fine Arts it would be difficult to delay the start of classes due to the characteristics of the teaching, because we need a long schedule and we cannot concentrate the classes and, on many occasions, we cannot even take advantage of the same space to teach different subjects because there are jobs that leave a classroom blocked for an entire course”, reflected the teacher who recalled, however, that Fine Arts has up to three time slots for the start of classes, so “we are one of the centers with the most staggered their inputs”.
The Faculty of Sciences of the University of La Laguna It is located on the Anchieta Campus and its dean, María del Mar Afonso, said that this center has five grades and many titles and the students already enter their classes in a staggered manner, between eight and nine in the morning, “but delaying it until ten o’clock is not feasible“He recalled that the delay in the start of classes means that the morning and afternoon lessons take place at the same time, so it would be necessary to have new teaching spaces “but the classrooms are not built in two days and, in addition, there is no land available to build new buildings,” said Afonso, who added that not even money solves this specific problem. “We all want the traffic jams to end but I think the solution lies in creating social awareness and improving mobility by sharing vehicles , for example, and the ULL is already working on that path,” he said.
sustainable mobility
The promotion of sustainable mobility was another of the commitments made by the university student representatives. The spokesman for the Canary Islands Student Association (ACE), Andrés Paz, explained that the delay in the start of classes is one of the possible solutions to the problem of traffic jams but that measure can “generate incompatibilities” and for this reason he insisted that there to try not to prolong the day for the students and look for other solutions. The spokesman for Student Liberty, Brian Trujillo, lamented that the Tenerife Council wants to “blame an institution like the ULL for traffic problems and, above all, its students” and recalled that “in recent years we have asked the President of the Cabildo to subsidize public transport so that it is totally free for students and, now that this has been achieved, it is intended to delay the departure of class in the afternoon until a few hours in which there is precisely no public transport that we can use ” . “It seems out of place to offer 20 million euros for the ULL to agree to the change and we believe that the same money could be used to promote public transport and create a truly sustainable alternative,” he concluded.
The Popular Party candidate for Council of Tenerife, lope afonso, described the proposal of President Pedro Martín as “pure electoralism” and pointed out that “offering 20 million euros to the University, in exchange for modifying the entrance hours of the students, seems to us to be careerist, taking into account the financial situation of the ULL, which has already been denounced by the rector herself in the media”. In this sense, Lope Afonso claimed that “the change in schedules is a measure that should be studied calmly, but without blackmail.” For her part, the Canary Islands Coalition candidate for the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila, pointed out that Pedro Martín and the PSOE They are “late” to the solutions to alleviate traffic on the TF-5 and recalled that the proposal to change the schedules was already made by the nationalist group a few months ago and was rejected by the government group. complete it with other actions such as the promotion of public transport”, he concluded.
