For some people, the end of daylight saving time on Nov. 6 gives the gift of an extra hour. For others, it’s the official start of seasonal depression. The time shifts an hour back, and sunset comes an hour earlier, noticeably early for those who live far from the equator.
Due to the unpopularity of the time change, there has been discussion of making daylight saving time permanent. The U.S. Congress has recently introduced a bill that would extend daylight saving time all year, keeping the clocks on the summer schedule and theoretically preventing those gloomy winter evenings. According to NBC, 71 per cent of Americans are in favor, although the bill is unlikely to pass.
I am in favor of having only one schedule throughout the year because it prevents having to adjust to a time change in the spring and fall, when seasonal change is already pronounced. Like many people, I’ve often thought that daylight saving time is preferable. Having an extra hour of light in the evening makes the afternoon commute easier and allows for more daylight in an average person’s schedule. For instance, most courses and commitments occur in the mid-day, between 10 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., which makes it difficult to get outdoors before dark. Other daylight saving supporters argue that evening sunlight saves energy because people turn their lights on later.
However, I recently learned that the schedule in the winter is standard time and daylight is actually being “saved” in the summer. Methods of measuring time are arbitrary, but standard time is closer to a natural rhythm, with 12 p.m. approximately corresponding to the height of the sun. Some proponents of standard time, including the magazine ScienceNews, claim that it is easier to wake up on standard time, since the sun is already up by the time most people have to prepare for school or work. If daylight saving time was extended through the winter, sunrise could be as late as 9 a.m. in Sherbrooke.
The crux of the problem is that people are trying to get as much daylight in the winter as in the summer, which is impossible unless you live on the equator.
The capitalists of the industrial revolution divided the clock into shifts of work, with no regard for whether it was natural for the human circadian rhythm. With a lot of activism and union bargaining, work has returned to eight hours a day for most people. However, we still have a productivity-oriented society which insists that November and early December need to be a crunch time for students and faculty because it’s the end of term.
The capitalists of the industrial revolution divided the clock into shifts of work, with no regard for whether it was natural for the human circadian rhythm.
Neither plan can materialize more daylight, nor can a time change address the real issue of why it’s difficult to get up in the morning, which is usually a deficiency of sleep. After researching the issue, I would prefer standard time all year, since many of the original reasons for daylight savings time are obsolete (it was proposed by Ben Franklin as a joke). Year-round standard time would make the shorter days come more gradually and the early evenings would feel more natural, since summer evenings would also be an hour earlier. I also appreciate having sunlight and tolerable temperatures on winter mornings.
The Campus 