Have you gotten used to the recent switch to Daylight Savings Time (DST) yet? If not, there’s hope for you. Recently, the United States Senate voted on a bill to get rid of DST. While I am not against the idea of getting rid of it, this bill, known as the Sunshine Protection Act, is no solution. Instead of going to Standard Time, which we use in the winter, the new law will make things worse.

The act states that DST will be permanent, with no more going forward or backward an hour twice a year. The argument behind the bill is that it will prevent children from having to leave for school when it’s dark outside as they currently have to do in many places during part of the year. However, moving to Standard Time would make more sense for this reason than saving time, as in winter, the sun wouldn’t rise until 8:30 in the morning.

Why is there a sudden push to end DST? Besides the main reason of students going and coming back from school in the dark, many have cited the fact that “losing” an hour affects people’s sleep for days afterwards. According to Senator Ed Markey (D, Massachusett), “[Time change] has real repercussions on our economy and our lives.”

There is another problem with this bill, and that is the government has tried this before. (Bet you didn’t know that.) And yet, we still have to change our clocks twice a year. That’s because the Government repealed the act a year later. In 1973, during the oil crisis, President Richard Nixon signed the bill into law, and repealed it the next year as a way to help America’s energy consumption. If there wasn’t an outcry at the time to get of DST
Many students at FCHS appear to be perfectly fine with the current way we change clocks. For example, freshman Calvin Sowell says, “I like Daylight Savings Time because of the extra sunlight in summer, and I get to go to sleep earlier in winter.” Why should we change something that most people are perfectly fine with?
If this legislation continues to move through Congress, I believe it should have one major change, which is to make Standard Time, which is what we use in the winter, permanent. Yes, the sun would rise earlier and set an hour later in the summer, but this will give people the opportunity to make the most of summer days.