Author: Jacob Goldstein
Going into my freshman year at Occidental, I imagined the academic experience here to be characterized by small class sizes, courses centered on class discussion and professors who actively engaged their students in the material. For the most part, I’ve found exactly that at Oxy. The problem is, I have not necessarily found this academic experience in the classes I expected, but not because I intentionally challenged myself to take classes in unfamiliar subjects. It is because I have never been able to get into the classes I wanted.
Registration at Occidental is a disaster, and I know I am not the only student that feels this way. To be blunt, it seems absolutely ridiculous that we students are paying over $40,000 for a quality education, yet we have to struggle just to get into the classes we want. The problems with registration are numerous. First-years and sophomores often find their desired classes full before their class’s registration period even begins. There is not an equal mix of Monday/Wednesday/Friday and Tuesday/Thursday classes. Students who draw late registration times are left to “scrounge” through the less popular classes. Worst of all, a sizeable amount of intro-level classes are extremely popular but offered in only one semester or one section. The result: you often need seniority or luck just to get into an intro class. Am I the only one who feels like we are expected to beg our way off of waiting lists, rather than get into the classes we want or need?
My first time registering for classes was completely disheartening. Here I was, a naive new frosh, excited to start classes. I spent literally hours reading the course catalog, looking through all the departmental offerings and painstakingly designing a schedule-which made it all the more painful when I signed onto Reggie the next day, only to discover that all of my desired classes were already full. Frantically, I flipped through the menus to register for my back-up classes, but found these were full as well. In the end, I resorted to arbitrarily choosing whatever classes were available. It was an awful experience; I could not help but wonder how I was going to get the caliber of education that drew me to Occidental if I could not even get into the classes I wanted.
I’ve registered two more times since then, and I’m sad to report that things haven’t gotten much better. My last registration was a particularly stressful experience-saddled with one of the last registration periods, I logged onto Reggie to find that nearly every course in the college was completely full. Forget choosing classes because they were within my major or fulfilled Core Program requirements. I had to spend an hour searching through Reggie just to find classes I could enroll in. Of the four classes I am taking this semester, I begged my way into three. Registering for these classes was out of the question-they were full three days before my registration time.
I realize that many of these registration problems are inevitable at any college. For example, in order to keep class sizes small, which I fully support, professors cannot and should not let any extra student into their class. There is no way to arrange classes to fit everyone’s schedule needs. And no matter how the administration sets up registration times, there is always going to be a group of students that goes last and has the worst choice of classes. That said, there are some changes-though basic-that I think would be tremendously helpful.
An effort needs to be made to ensure that the academic departments have a mix of Monday/Wednesday/Friday and Tuesday/Thursday classes. Too many departments offer the majority of their classes only on M/W/F or only on T/TR. Offering multiple sections of popular 100 and 200 level classes would also dramatically reduce scheduling and rescheduling issues. Finally, the number one way to reduce registration issues would be to hire more professors. With more professors come more classes, more sections of popular classes and smaller class sizes across the board. I realize that hiring new professors is a complex process filled with economic and political boundaries. That said, we students pay plenty of money for tuition; should not the majority of it be used to hire new faculty and improve Occidental’s academics in general?
I love Occidental, and I have no complaints about the quality of the education I am receiving. But I am completely fed up with the entire registration system. I am tired of imbalanced schedules and having to plead with professors to add me to their class. I am tired of my parents paying a private-school tuition only to have me encounter the registration problems often associated with public universities 10 times the size of Occidental. More than anything, I’m tired of spending days logged onto the “Course Count” application, watching helplessly as the classes I want to take inevitably fill up. Supposedly, registration gets easier as you move up from frosh to senior. But I’m not holding my breath.
Jacob Goldstein is a sophomore Sociology major. He can be reached at jgoldstein@oxy.edu.
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