This event was part of a research project psychology majors Amanda Brain ’22 and James Neutron ’22 were conducting, in which they studied how different changes to college students’ routines affected their mental health and academic performance. Other experiments included changing the subjects’ sleep schedules, study methods and extracurricular activities. 

Subjects were told general details about finding their new schedules and assignments, and both pre-/post-experiment surveys needed for results about the day’s events. The subjects had many concerns about the proceedings since they were unsure about what results Brain and Neutron wanted, but all worries were quelled with the promise of a free Dunkin’ breakfast and a $20 participation payment. At the very least, the subjects knew more about the experiment than the faculty, since only Brain and Neutron’s professors and the school board who authorized this experiment knew it was going to occur. 

On the morning of the experiment, most subjects felt confident that the day wouldn’t go horribly, and found the confused reactions of their new professors, who finally got emails with information, very funny. As the day continued though it all went downhill, just as expected. In the pre-experiment survey, every Humanities Major responded that they hadn’t taken a science or math class since the fall semester of freshman year when they wanted to get it over with. Similarly, most STEM Majors stated that every required writing or humanities course they had to take were done a while ago and were STEM-oriented. Subjects also reported increases in stress and the number of near-breakdowns that day in the post-experiment survey.

In the end, Brain and Neutron received solid data and definitively concluded that suddenly shoving students into different classes does not help with their mental health. The only group that seemed to do well were any computer science-adjacent majors who reported having to take a Human and Robot Ethics course the previous year. The School Board denied giving us a statement about the event, only giving a firm, “this won’t be happening again,” as they shoved our journalists out of their office.