I love Brandeis Fridays; I really do. That last class of the week, Sherman chicken wings, catching up on those shows you missed on Thursday night after your 12:10 to 1:30 p.m. class-it's a delightful little way to end the week.

But I've come to recognize that perhaps Fridays as I know and love them ought to maybe change for the benefit of the University at large.

At one of the recent budget cut brainstorming forums, one participant raised the prospect of switching from a five-day to a four-day workweek.

Switching the way we operate relative to time in order to save some money?

Seems a little bit crazy-in the United States, hearing about something other than a five-day workweek evokes a certain sense of unnatural disorder.

But shifting from the five-day workweek to a largely, yet not completely, four-day one (as I'll explain) presents possibly significant and sustained financial savings, which seem to be the precise type of economic BandAid the University has been seeking.

Even though our strangely standard Monday-Wednesday-Thursday and Tuesday-Friday classes may have some nostalgic appeal, just as the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee noted in its report last spring, weaning off such a system is probably in the University's best interest. But that CARS committee suggestion doesn't go nearly far enough.

I'm not sure exactly how the individual that spoke up at the forum envisioned a Brandeisian four-day workweek, but my vision looks something like a more radical version of the current model employed by schools like Columbia University. There, most classes occur in Monday-Wednesday and Tuesday-Thursday pairs, with some longer seminars at various blocks throughout the week. Fridays are much emptier than other days, reserved only for a handful of language classes, seminars and lab courses.

We could use a similar system-obviously by pushing most courses to fit a more limited range of time slots, it would be beneficial to use the Columbia-style idea of pushing at least some of the lab classes to Friday.

But aside from those and the low-level language courses, there would be no need for classes on Fridays.

However, so long as individual department offices remain operational on Fridays, it'd be tough to reap in the real financial gains that could materialize from completely closing down a number of University buildings an extra day of the week.

So to that end, if the University wanted to embrace the full merits of a four-day workweek, it should phase out Fridays as a workday for most University departments.

Some buildings in the Mandel Quad, as well as other places around campus, could then be completely closed an entire extra day of the week.

The University could save a notable amount of money from having one less day of temperature control and maintenance for a number of large buildings on campus.

And if the four-day workweek extended to other campus entities like administrative and advisory offices, then the savings start rolling in at an even greater pace.

Faculty course loads would remain the same, and thus their pay would logically be unchanged. Yet how such a change would ultimately be reflected through employee pay gradients would remain to be seen. The University could simply choose to continue its current demands on different segments of the academy with a new, increased focus on time efficiency.

Switching to a four-day workweek might be perceived as a rather radical change for the University.

But I'm willing to say that it's far less radical-and perhaps just as effective-as any of the cuts that will be announced in the coming weeks.

The difference is that the switch to a four-day workweek might make things rather tough across much of the University's infrastructure.

Additionally, in light of recent economic woes, many school districts across the country switched to four-day workweeks to save money on transportation costs as well as other costs that would be comparable to the costs saved at this University.

That might seem like the messier and more frustrating option. The switch to such a system would be chaotic and hopelessly inconvenient, at least at first.

On the other hand, phasing out entire academic programs might seem like cleaner cuts for the University to make.

But that doesn't make them the right cuts-it only makes them the simple ones.

I'm a fan of my treasured 12:10 to 1:30 p.m. class on Fridays. But I'd be willing to trade that in for a better Thursday night and the potential preservation of programs that might otherwise be wholly eliminated.

Wouldn't you?