University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

First-Yearmen Left Out In Mad Scramble

By ALLEN BARRINGER

—Ed.)

Once again this year,
undergraduates have been
faced with arranging their
spring class schedules during
the first week of classes. As
everyone involved now know
the College students who
preregistered for courses the
week of December 6, received
their course lists the morning
of February 1. Classes beg
February 2, and the confusion
lasts until the final "add" d
February 9 (one week later).

Others here at the
University may not understand
just how significant these
course lists are, particularly to
the first year undergraduates.
At pre-registration each
student asked for a full set of
courses and ideally he should
have been enrolled in all of
them. But (thanks to
popularity, classroom size or
the professor's desire to keep it
small) many a course is
over enrolled and the computer
has to pick who gets it.

Upperclassmen come first;
any first-yearmen are taken
they are picked at random for
the remaining spaces available
Not uncommonly this semester
first-yearmen got two or three
courses out of six or more
requested; some got none at
all.

Mad Scramble

Then the fun begins. Faced
with an incomplete schedule,
the student must get into
courses by getting the
instructor's signature on an
"add" card. The mechanics are
simple: each instructor is
supposed to have a class roster
from the computer telling him
how many spaces are left in his
class, if any; he can take
additional or extra students if
he wants to by signing their
add cards.

Students dropping courses
are supposed to tell him so he
can "add" a replacement. But
in oil practice, filling out an
incomplete class schedule is a
juggling act of the first order:
to avoid conflicting times, a
student who got three out of
five preregistered courses may
have to drop two of these and
add four new ones in order to
get five that will fit.

Professors in turn do not
generally know how many
students on the roster will drop
their course until the first few
class meetings; only the most
experienced can estimate the
real number of vacancies and
sign add cards accordingly.

First year undergraduates,
who have the worst scheduling
problems and the least
experience in solving them,
tend to run up against either
the inexperienced,
overcautious junior instructor
or the overburdened,
overextended lecturer, in their
introductory level courses.

More serious is the
complaint, frequent last year
and this, that some instructors
unknowingly or deliberately
made themselves unavailable
(outside of class time) to
students desperately trying to
consult them about adding
their course. A few of these
professors did not even meet
their posted office hours on
these crucial days.

I asked one instructor about
it who seemed not to know or
care about the students'
quandary, after all, he was
happy with a small
section—less papers to grade
and so forth—so what incentive

was there to put up with a
bunch of over-anxious
freshmen who could only
increase his burden? Hopefully
others had better excuses.

Let me emphasize again,
this whole chaotic process
began the morning before
classes started. This is
preposterous—since it is totally
unnecessary. The Dean's Office
can simply post the
preregistered course lists during
the Christmas holidays and let
students with schedule
deficiencies start "adding"
courses during the reading
week in January.

No one has to panic, and
even the most determined
professor's hiding place can be
found. Why not?

First, look at the way the
present system operates.
Undergraduates registered by
December 10 this year, or, 54
days before the beginning of
the new semester. The
Registrar's Office took 38 days
to process this information (to
my knowledge they weren't
asked to get it in any sooner)
before forwarding the
computer results to the Deans
of the Schools on January 17.

Simultaneously, class rosters
were sent to the instructors via
the academic departments. It
took another 15 days before
the Dean of the College felt he
could reveal the results (despite
the statement in the White
Book for Spring, 1972, page E,
that the course lists "will be
available in the offices of
the Deans during the last
two weeks of January."

One day before beginning
classes last week, students
found out where they stood
and began the mad scramble to
rearrange courses.

Certainly if the Registrar,
Dean and Departments each
get better than two weeks to
digest the students' input, then
the student ought to merit
better than one day in which