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They call themselves the Denton Tea Party and like their New England namesake, they have come to protest. Pickets will be raised and literature distributed on Nov. 17 at the Free Speech area in front of the University Union in a protest of the university administration's changes to the final exams schedule.

An anticipated 20-50 students will gather Wednesday to protest, according to Ryan Schuette, League City junior, who is organizing the event with Kathryn McNally, Houston junior. He said the idea to protest developed when he received encouragement from fellow students after the administration announced its decision to move the first three days of final examinations a week earlier.

Rick Villarreal, NT athletics director, was a driving force behind the administration's choice to change the final exam schedule. Villarreal said he told administrators that the athletics department and the university would benefit more in the long-term if the exam schedule was changed, allowing "easily over 1,000" more students to attend the game.

Villarreal explained his job as athletics director is to build an athletics department that competes at the highest level. "Sometimes you have to be willing to adapt to change to get where you want to go," Villarreal said. That change comes at a cost to students and the university according to Alan Mayper, accounting professor.

"Conceptually, what you are, as a student, potentially losing is a half-week of class exposure compared to other students who take the same course during a long semester," Mayper said. "You may be at a minor competitive disadvantage compared to a student who took it under a normal semester."

Another cost to students, according to Mayper, is the loss of study time needed to prepare for final examinations. According to Villarreal, administrators were warned last spring of the scheduling conflict between exams and the bowl.

He met with the Norval Pohl, NT president, and Howard Johnson, provost, to voice the athletics department's concern about a small number of Mean Green fans attending the game. Villarreal said bowl representatives would be uninterested in inviting the team to play in future games if NT attendance was poor at the New Orleans Bowl

The university's exposure to a national audience through bowl games, according to the athletics director, is invaluable. "Long term for this institution, it's a plus," Villarreal said. "We're not compromising academics for athletics."

For many students like McNally, it seems that quite the opposite is happening. "If we're trying to raise our image as a university, we should do it through academics before athletics. Academics should always come first," McNally said.

Dick White, of the business faculty and Faculty Senate member, said the senate and the senate executive committee approved the schedule change. "Given everything considered, it was a good decision," White said.

According to Mayper, there was no easy alternative to accommodate the bowl game. However, the university could have changed the exam schedules at a later date so students would not have lost any time in preparing for final exams.

"I believe they could have planned for this if they had the desire to. It was a problem they could have foreseen," he said.

Under title 19 of the Texas administrative code, universities are given a "minimum length of courses" where "traditionally-delivered three-semester-credit-hour courses should contain" at least 45 contact hours. The change in schedule shortens this by two hours.

According to Ray Grasshoff, assistant director of governmental relations/public information for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the rule allows the university some flexibility to meet "different circumstances as they arise."

"Typically, that could happen when an instructor becomes ill, or when there's some problem with the classroom, and the class does not meet," he said in an e-mail.

The rule, he said, should be used as a guideline for what is considered a good course. Dennis Mueller, of the physics faculty and member of the Faculty Senate and senate executive committee said when the schedule change was discussed at the senate executive meeting two weeks ago, he was led to believe that Student Government Association executives approved the change. Mueller felt the students should have the final say.

"It's the students in the end that will have to deal with the issues," Mueller said. However, Jesse Davis, SGA president, was the only SGA executive asked about the schedule change. Although Davis agreed with the schedule change, it was not an SGA approval. The SGA has not discussed the schedule change at any meeting this semester. Davis believes the SGA should not have a stance on the change.

Davis said it is the faculty's decision when to test students. "It's never been up to the students when we are tested," he said.

For Schuette, part of the protest addresses the need for students to be heard when the administration makes decisions that will affect the student body.

"It's just to voice our opinion. It will not likely be that we'll change anything, but as students we need to be heard by the administration because were not consulted as a student body through the SGA," he said.

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