Satire: Attendance Rate Increases by Zero Percent After Daylight Savings

Even after clocks were turned back one hour last Sunday, Nov. 7, no additional students attended their Monday classes when compared to the same day the previous week.

“One more hour of sleep is not going to change years of perpetual sleep deprivation,” argued Dusty Cooper ’25, who slept through his 10 a.m. philosophy course on Monday morning. Cooper insisted that repeatedly saying “Tonight will be the night that I get in bed early” or “This week I promise that I’m going to fix my sleep schedule” are far more effective strategies for improving sleep hygiene.

“Most people don’t know this, but daylight saving time was invented to trick students into feeling well-rested come November when their burnout is typically hitting a peak,” commented Director of Health Services Dr. Emily Jones. “Modern scientific studies have told us that students’ circadian rhythms shift back as they enter their teenage years, which is why colleges and universities throughout the country came together to invent the daylight savings program.”

Unfortunately for Amherst, allowing students to sleep in one extra hour relative to the previous week did not result in a single student waking up for a class that they previously slept through. “I regularly sleep through my 10 a.m. lecture and my 1:30 p.m. discussion, so if you want daylight savings to influence my behavior, you’re going to have to turn the clocks back at least six hours,” Cooper added.

“Even with the daylight savings program in place, I have no intention of changing my sleeping habits,” Cooper concluded. “I’ve spent the past four years flirting with critically dangerous sleep deprivation, and I can’t think of any good reason why that should change. The idea of daylight savings is fun, but we all know that the clocks are just going to turn back in the spring.”

Cooper is joined by Lindsay Balow ’25, who got confused, turned her clock one hour forward, and unintentionally arrived two hours early to every class, and Ryan Norman ’22, who “didn’t come to class on Monday because he just didn’t feel like it.”