Registration: An Absolute Disaster

If anyone needs proof of how members of the administration show no regard for the undergraduate students, he only has to look at the latest fiasco involving registration.

This is the time when students are burdened by end-of-semester schedules; papers with imminent deadlines, Science tests this week, Jewish Studies finals next week, and regular finals the week after. Amidst all of this, the student is expected to drop everything and plan out his schedule for the next few months in only one day.

One would rightfully expect that at such a demanding time the Office of the Registrar would provide registration times, dates and most importantly, the Spring semester schedules, in a timely and orderly fashion. However, students received the course booklets for the Spring semester a mere twenty-four hours before many of them were to register. Somehow, eleven-hundred students are expected to meet with and have their schedules approved by an Academic Advisor in the few days allotted for registration. Over two-hundred seniors had to have their schedules approved sometime between Tuesday afternoon, when they finally got the booklets and their registration appointments, and Wednesday, when they were scheduled to register.

Though we are confident that the dedicated staff of the Advisement Center will do everything they can to accommodate the rush, there is a natural limit to what they can do. This situation will invariably overburden the Advisement Center, and will ultimately defeat the purpose of the Center as the place where students can discuss the academic opportunities available to them while ensuring they fulfill the myriad requirements of their programs.

Students need at least a week to examine the various combinations of courses that interest them and those required to graduate. Even problems with entering the codes into the new Banner system should have no bearing on when students receive their booklets. If the administration wanted registration this week, booklets should have been available, at the very latest, last week. Since there was a delay, students should not be forced to rush their planning and risk the possibility of being locked out of a course they may realize later on that they wanted or needed. Registration could easily have been scheduled around Jewish Studies finals next week and if necessary, through finals.

There is no excuse gentlemen. You just don't give a damn.