At six in the morning many Stony Brook University students are sleeping or are going to sleep, but for the roughly 500 students who are taking Physics 121, they need to be up and alert.

The course requirement which takes two semesters to complete, begins at 6:50am. This is the first course to be offered at Stony Brook University during that time slot.

According to Professor John Hobbs, who is currently teaching the course, an average of about 350 students attends regularly.

Fifteen percent of the student’s grade comes from attending class and participating in several clicker questions, where the professor asks multiple choice questions throughout the lecture and students click an answer with a clicker devise that is assigned with their name.

“If there were no clicker questions I wouldn’t go to class,” said Victoria Tellsma, senior.

Tellsma, who is a psychology major, is taking the course to fulfill her chemistry minor which helps her into dental school.

Regardless of the time Tellsma decided to register for the course, but the commuter from Baldwin soon found out that the LIRR did not run at a time that correlated to the course time.

“Even if I wanted to commute I couldn’t because it [the LIRR] doesn’t run early enough,” said Tellsma.

The solution she came up with is having her mom pay for an apartment close to campus.

She was able to use that solution for this semester.

Tellsma decided to rent a place until the end of December. She said she figured she would be able to commute next semester without a problem. That was until she began registering for class and found out that Physics 122, the second half of the course, was only offered during the 6:50 am time slot again.

Her mom cannot continue paying for the apartment and a new tenant is scheduled to move in next month.

About a quarter of the students are commuters faced with similar problems attending class.

A survey based on the course was sent out to the class by current student Ezra Margono, who is also the photo editor of The Statesman.

Of the 166 students who chose to answer the survey 56 are commuters. Of those who are commuters 98 percent of them say they have trouble getting to class.

Many students left anonymous comments. One said “This class time schedule is very unfair to commuter students, especially since I live in Woodside, Queens NY. There are no trains that run that early and allow me to attend class on time. I have to stay overnight in the commuter lounge which is very uncomfortable, inconvenient and sometimes it is cold and I don’t get any sleep during the night. Also I can’t afford to live on campus and I don’t have too many friends that allow me to spend the night on campus. Since I have to stay up all night in the commuter lounge and get no sleep, it effects my ability to stay awake and do well in my other class I have after the early PHY class.”

Commuting was not the only problem students had. Many commented that they could not concentrate that early or had a late class or activity the night before, while others said they would like there to be a campus dining option available at that time for breakfast and a SINC site open.

When answering the question about efficiently learning in class 81 percent of the students who answered said they strongly agreed that they would learn better if this class was later in the day.

When the course is over this semester Professor Hobbs is planning on comparing the grades against students who took the course last semester at a later time. “About the same number of people show,” said Professor Hobbs. “The grades look about the same.”

He said if there is a drastic different then there would be a case to try to change the class time.

The department is willing to change the time, but is unable to because there is no classroom large enough to accommodate the class size later in the day.

If the class were to be split in half, Professor Hobbs said he would be willing to teach both sections.

Director of Undergraduate Studies Abhay Deshpande is on travel and was unable to comment.

Margono plans on presenting the survey to the office of student affairs and to the dean’s office of arts and sciences in hopes of a solution.