The following is meant for satirical purposes. 

As a college student, I suffer from having a class two days a week at 9:30 a.m. During one of these classes, in a moment of sleep-deprived thinking, I came up with writing about early morning classes being a problem. Through research done on this, I have discovered that they are not just a problem but a war crime.  

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, “Article 87, third paragraph, of the 1949 Geneva Convention III provides: ‘Any form of torture or cruelty is forbidden.’” Now, how do early classes constitute as a war crime based on this? Well, according to the AMA Journal of Ethics, “Courts internationally and in the United States have recognized sleep deprivation as cruel and unusual punishment, constituting torture.” Now we have what is being used as a means of torture: sleep deprivation. Critics might say that I just don’t have a healthy sleep schedule, but that’s not the case. 

According to Cornell Health, college students need seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Despite this, college students are only getting six to 6 ½ hours of sleep on average. According to Cleveland Clinic, “Sleep deprivation is when you aren’t sleeping enough, or you aren’t getting good, quality sleep.” This means that on average college students are sleep-deprived which leads us to our war crime.

According to NPJ Science and Learning, “On average, students went to bed at 1:54 a.m.” I can personally attest that I more often than not don’t get to sleep until after 1. A major reason for that is I finish up assignments late at night and have unintentionally conditioned myself for that. Combine that with having to get up for 9:30 classes twice a week—conditioning me to wake up very early—and I’m sleep-deprived. 

A great number of students on campus are in sports. There’s most likely some sort of early morning practice they have several times a week. I personally am not involved in sports, so imagine having to be up even earlier, then doing physical activity, and then going to class in a few hours. This clearly would cause sleep deprivation, which is considered torture, which in turn is a war crime. The easy solution to this is to not have classes so early in the morning. This would allow students to get more sleep and thus no longer be sleep-deprived. But that’s just my take on it as a sleep-deprived college student.