BERKELEY, Calif. – In this revolutionary opinion piece, I am officially calling for the university to increase Berkeley time from ten to fifteen minutes. The reason? I’m really, really, really out of shape.
It’s not just the hills of Berkeley, you see. It’s the cumulative effect of using the pandemic as an excuse to avoid all physical activity. I mean there’s a reason that my Apple Watch asks me to sit down every time I try to go from Dwinelle to Baker. In fact, did you know when I chose to go here, I had never been? The university told me to use our Minecraft server to get a realistic experience of campus, but no one told me that one Minecraft block is one meter.
I’ve floated my proposal to my peers, and we’ve gathered an astounding amount of support from our fellow students. Student-athletes, especially, claim they’ve been training for this moment their entire college career by perfecting the art of the last-minute sprint to class.
This support has driven me to continue developing my revolutionary idea. Why stop at 15 minutes? It seems insensitive that we don’t make it at least thirty, or even better sixty minutes. In fact, I’d argue that it is cruel that I am not allowed a one-and-a-half hour grace period for my 12:30-2pm class on Philosophical Perceptions of Time. It feels cruel and racialized that my professor won’t count attendance if I’m not there for at least half of the lecture.
Ultimately, since both viewpoints are equally valid, I’m willing to put aside my personal beliefs and compromise with the University. I don’t really care how long we increase Berkeley Time to, just that we increase it, because otherwise I am going to snap both of my legs just so I can use LOOP.