Like many other students, I was on my way to class when my phone buzzed at 5:52 pm. “Classes cancelled on St. George campus,” read the email.

I’ll be honest, my first impulse was to jump up and down and cheer—but my elation was followed by annoyance. Why cancel classes at 5:52 pm? I was already outside, freezing my ass off, on my way to class. And if I’m already on my way to class, there must be countless commuters who have already endured hours on the TTC just to arrive and be told that their class is… cancelled? Why couldn’t the university have made this call earlier?

The university’s snow day debacle is just the latest symptom of an dysfunctional, inefficient, and inconsiderate bureaucracy. Don’t get me wrong—sometimes bureaucracy makes sense. Sometimes institutions are slow-moving by design, and for good reason (see Parliament). Eugene McCarthy once wrote that “the only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.” But let’s be clear: U of T’s bureaucratic efficiency isn’t doing students any favours.

Let’s turn to exhibit A: the exam schedule. Why does it come out so late? As reported earlier this year by The Varsity, “it is unclear who specifically is responsible” for creating exam schedules. According to their reporting, “faculty and registrars from across many different departments are involved,” leading to a too-many-cooks situation.

Maybe all universities encounter this problem—except that they don’t. Last semester, McGill released their schedule on October 5th; UBC released their full schedule on October 10th, a full three weeks ahead of U of T. UBC actually released their finalized exam schedule (without room locations) on September 18th. And when did U of T students get theirs? October 31st.

UBC uses an exam scheduling software because that’s how modern universities operate. So what about Canada’s #1 research institution? The Varsity found that U of T has “little in terms of institutional policy.” The 2018 fall exam schedule was actually delayed because administration needed extra time to “look right down to the student level to look at the schedules and try to adjust them to reduce the number of students that have conflicts,” according to a university spokesperson—that doesn’t sound like they’re using any sort of automation.

The list goes on and on. Every year a bunch of course grades are released late by Arts & Science. Last year some course grades were released on January 17th—literally the day of the add/drop deadline.

The big takeaway here is that central administration doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with the impact of their delays on students. U of T prides itself on drawing students from all around the world, but doesn’t seem to understand that those students need to book flights to go home. It doesn’t realize that commuter students need more than 8 minutes notice that their class is cancelled. How are students supposed to choose courses if they don’t even know whether they have the prerequisites?

This university would not be able to operate without its undergrads. It’s time for administration to at least pretend that we are a priority.