With a new school year come new changes at UMass Boston as students and professors alike attempt to adapt to this semesters implementation of 8:00 A.M classes.

The new schedule, which was started mainly by Oscar Gutierrez of the Academic Affairs department at UMB, is a small yet significant change to the daily routine at the university.

Although classes are starting only a half-hour sooner than they have in all of UMB’s academic history, many are already seeing the effects of the early start.

Sophomore Nathaniel Neary has noticed the change, but said it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference for him.

“It’s a win-lose situation. I have to get up earlier but I also get to leave earlier. I don’t really mind it,” said Neary.

Megan Padilla is a freshman at UMass Boston this year, coming out of a high school that started classes at 7:55 A.M.

“Even though they [classes] started at the same time, I seem to get here earlier than I did at my high school, so it is easy for me,” Padilla said.

According to Gutierrez, the increasing enrollment at UMB forced the school to come up with a new strategy on how to accommodate more students.

“There’s an increasing number of students, so we cannot just stay with the same model; we have to find ways to better accommodate the facilities so that we can better serve the students,” said Gutierrez.

Professor David Flesche is a philosophy professor at UMB that teaches an 8 A.M class. He said he’s not too keen on the early start.

“I don’t like it. From a teaching point of view, we are sort of rushed into the classroom.”

Flesche said he is even more concerned, however, with the subtle effects that 8 A.M. classes will have on students enrolled in them. He said he notices that students tend to trickle into class in the morning instead of being on time.

“It is very difficult for most students to get up at six and get here by eight. The extra half-hour is helpful. That first half-hour of class just seems less coherent [to the lecture],” said Flesche.

That loss of coherency didn’t seem to be a worry for the students enrolling in the red-eye courses however, as Gutierrez said that all introductory 111 sections starting at 8 A.M. are filled to capacity for the fall semester, and 90% of the sections are filled for the spring semester.

“I am just delighted that the numbers are up there because that means that we are really using the capacity we have for more classes,” Gutierrez said.

Although a somewhat controversial idea, it doesn’t seem like 8:00 A.M. classes are going to go away any time soon.

“It is a win-win situation for everyone,” said Gutierrez.