By The Editorial Board
The first week back from spring break always feels like a punch in the gut. Between the healing sunburn, ongoing midterms and the skipping forward an hour into the future, students are having a rough week. However, there may be some good news found deep in the cracks as daylight saving has the potential to become permanent.
On Tuesday, the United States Senate unanimously voted on the “Sunshine Protection Act” to keep daylight saving permanent. No more moving the clock back and forth every six months. Awaiting the eventual decision once it’s gone through the House of Representatives and received President Joe Biden’s signature, time will no longer move backward starting in November 2023.
While we understand the hype for this is a little underwhelming once finding out we might have a year still to go, there’s legitimate cause for why this practice needs to stop.
First off, setting clocks back an hour was started in Europe during World War I to conserve fuel. The United States adopted the practice two years later in 1918 but quickly shut it down once the war ended. With time seemingly in limbo, there weren’t any federal laws regarding if daylight saving required recognition from everyone. However, former President Franklin Roosevelt brought it back in 1942 and suggested a year-round daylight saving time called “war time.” Lasting until 1945, the decision kept changing with the people’s decision. Until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 — to establish firm time zones and standard time usage throughout the nation — we kept up with the practice of saving the day. The same way time couldn’t be settled, there are many reasons as to the confusing history of why this was started in the first place.
To put it simply, there’s no longer a reason for us to continue doing this.
Another aspect to why daylight saving only causes chaos is the increase in the risk of heart attacks and traffic accidents. We’re well aware that moving forward to just go back later on messes up our circadian rhythm, but messing with that rhythm leads to further problems in behavioral and cognitive abilities. It doesn’t seem that one hour of sleep would have this much effect within the world, but it goes to show how wired our bodies are and how heavily we rely on routines.
Currently, Arizona and Hawaii are the only two states in the nation that don’t recognize daylight saving time. While this may soon come to be the entire nation, it’s clear from the unanimous vote, drastic medical concerns and crash-like accidents that we all agree to end daylight saving time. Come to your senses and see that time shouldn’t be moving because of the season we are entering or to soak up the sun.
