Dear Ms. Elmore and Mr. Louis

It’s time to replace students’ desks at Diablo Valley College. Imagine you are in a tough class studying with a small desk and you want to take notes and read the textbook at the same time.

Usually, the college students need room on a desk to put more than a book with a planner, a pen, a calculator or a binder.

Within the small desk space, it is easy to the materials to fall off it. The sound of them falling on the ground is not only distracting you during class, but also the other students around you.

In fact, the classrooms in the Humanities building, the forum, and many other buildings in DVC have very small desks. The standard eight-and-half by 11-inch notebooks can barely fit on them.

In addition, the small desks can give you neck and back pains. Studying in strange postures to fit in the small desks and writing for several hours a day will definitely cause some muscular pains.

According to Spine-Health’s website, the article, “How Poor Posture Causes Neck Pain” stated that poor posture is a big issue. In that article, Physical Therapist Gavin Morrison articulated that being long term in bad postures can cause a lot of health problems including, “Disc degeneration problems, which may potentially lead to cervical degenerative disc disease, cervical osteoarthritis, or a cervical herniated disc.”

As DVC students, we have rights to speak out to have a more comfortable environment to study and do well in the college. When the desks get bigger to fit with at least a book and a notebook, it would be easier to concentrate on the lectures for the students rather than be distracted by continuous sounds and motions of pens falling.

To do so, we need to collect our votes to send a  petition to the school to replace the small desks. If you are a DVC student and feel uncomfortable with the small desks, please contact me and send to the petition.

~Soo Lim

DVC student