September 27, 2007 - 11:00pm
By Venus Wu
It is (almost) a universally acknowledged truth that a Cornell University student must be in want of sleep.
Prof. Maas would have preferred the word “need” over “want.”
“Unfortunately, the treating of sleep as a luxury, as opposed to a necessity, is born out of ignorance,” said Prof. James Maas Ph.D. ’66, psychology, who lectures more than 1,300 students every year on the importance of sleep in his PSYCH 101 class.
The current generation of Cornellians are more sleep-deprived than ever, and they are nowhere near getting the ideal 9.25 hours of sleep. “When I started on faculty in 1964 … people got around seven hours. Now the average is 6.1 hours per night at Cornell,” said Maas.
