Discussion sections are essential elements for students faced with large lecture classes. They provide students with a smaller classroom setting and allow them to introduce questions about the lectures. The most important part of this small group interaction is the discussion and insight that it produces. The concept of discussion sections is to have students interact with each other regarding course material. This allows students to clarify unresolved issues as well as verbalize what they learned in lecture. By discussing the material, students are able to absorb it more easily.
Logically, it is easiest for students in discussion sections to face each other. But with the fixed seating in many of the rooms in Mason Hall, students are forced to face the instructor and not their peers. This makes communication difficult between classmates. Instead of the instructor playing the role of mediator, he or she becomes a dominating participant in the conversation - reducing it to a small lecture. The conversation revolves around the instructor's comments rather than allowing the students to question and contradict each other.
The University's Scheduling Department is assigned the daunting task of finding rooms for lectures and discussions. Class information is fed into a computer, which then matches each class with a respective classroom. The department makes disabled students and instructors its first priority for room preference. Other requests, such as instructors' need for video projection equipment, are considered as well. Only if an LSA department requests moveable chairs will the Scheduling Department consider it as a possibility - but it is not held as a high priority.
It is not the Scheduling Department's fault that discussions are assigned restrictive rooms - the LSA Deans' Office and the academic units heading those discussions have failed to renovate old classrooms. The second floor of Mason Hall needs renovation the most as much of the third floor already has moveable seats. In addition, individual LSA departments should request that each of their discussion sections have a suitable room that helps facilitate communication rather than hinders it. The University owes it to its students to provide the best possible learning environment - even if it requires renovating old facilities.