University of Virginia Library

Mad Scramble Leaves Out First-Yearmen

to respond to such an
imperfect match.

What's more, that one day
was taken this year from the
student's semester break;
preregistered students had no
other reason to come back
before classes resumed than to
see what courses they were
allotted and to scramble for
more at the first opportunity.

What University
administrator or faculty
member will cheerfully give up
a day of his vacation just to
find out what he could have
been told (and acted upon)
weeks before?

Objections to releasing
pre-registration information
early seem to center around
the administrative "bother" of
giving it out. Sure, if you tell
three secretaries in the Dean's
Office to spend expensive time
leafing through stacks of cards
for hundreds of clamoring
students, that's bother.

But this is computerized
information, for heaven's sake!
It is no trouble, and little
expense, for the computer to
make a linear printout of the
same information it puts on
the present individual cards;
these long sheets could be
pasted up on a corridor wall in
each school.

Or in the alternative, every
instructor already gets class
rosters for his own use; it
would cost nothing to require
departments to post a copy of
these near the department
office.

Students could check these
off against their requests to
determine which courses they
did not get into. If anonymity
matters, it can be preserved by
the same device (social
security numbers) used to post
grades throughout the
semester.

As a third alternative, just
pay students to distribute
course cards on the same basis
as at present, only three weeks
earlier.

The pre-registration date
can be moved back two weeks,
if necessary to give the
Registrar or the computer
center time to prepare the lists
before Reading Week
Instructors may not be happy
about handling "add" requests
without the reassurance of a
couple of class meetings—but
this can be partially cured by
reviving the requirement that
students get an instructor's
signature to drop a course, so
he will know of the vacancies
created.

If this requirement was
abandoned to ease the stress of
the one-day scramble, it
presents no difficulty over a
two or three week period.

And to cover the remaining
uncertainty in class rosters,
instructors can put names on a
waiting list in an orderly
manner, so that actual
vacancies at the first class
meeting can be filled,
automatically and so that
students will know beforehand
how good their chances are.

If someone asks how fair
this is to newly entering
students, let him consider that
the student who pre-registers
already gets first crack at every
course, so little fairness is left
at "add" time.

Nothing prevents The
University from allowing an
applicant to submit the
equivalent of a preregistration
form as early as the
intra-University pre-registration
deadline; let latecomers pick
the leftovers. After all, how
fair is the present system to
students already enrolled?

One year ago I wrote Irby
Cauthen, Jr., Dean of the
College of Arts and Sciences,
about that January's "mad
scramble" for classes in the
College. Under new procedures
the College is responsible for
most of the classes of
Architecture first-yearmen and
for a few Engineers about to
transfer, as well as its own
students; any improvements in
the College procedures alone
will thus be widely felt.

But nothing has changed in
the year since I wrote, inter
alia, "I can think of nothing
better designed to assure this
generation of skeptical
students that the University
administration is just another
unfeeling, unthinking
bureaucracy to whom students
are just necessary objects to be
tolerated and manipulated."

There was no response to
that and other complaints last
year. The only change in
procedure has been to move
the bottleneck from the Gym
to Cabell Hall.

The Registrar still gets a
month, the Deans and
Departments get two weeks,
and the students still get one
day (taken from vacation) in
which to arrange classes for the
semester. The hardship on
students, especially
first-yearmen, continues, as
unnecessary as ever.