Students should solve own schedule problems

4/10/08 7:00pm

As students register for classes in the fall, they may notice a change in ESTHER. Beginning next semester, ESTHER will block students from registering for two or more courses that are scheduled for the same time (see story, page 1).The primary reason for this change is to get professors to realize that they need to schedule courses so that they do not overlap. However, we feel that this change will punish students instead of the professors. If Rice wants to notify professors to stop scheduling overlapping classes, it should do so by simply telling them instead of inconveniencing students. Monthly Faculty Senate meetings would be the perfect venue for the administration to bring up this issue.

There is a way to track which classes overlap without actually changing the system. The administration could keep track of which classes get dropped more often and ask those professors to move their classes. In fact, these types of statistics should have been tracked since ESTHER's inception.

Another detrimental byproduct of this move is that students have less flexibility when they are shopping for classes. The shopping period has already been shortened to just two weeks, and barring students from registering for two classes scheduled at the same time just compounds this problem.

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This change will supposedly make registration easier for students so they will not erroneously end up with an overbooked schedule, but what aspect of filling out a Special Registration Form - which involves printing and filling out the form, possibly explaining to your professor why you are not registered, convincing them to sign it and turning it into the Registrar's Office between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. - is easier than simply registering online? We do not need to be babied. We feel that Rice students are smart enough to realize when they have made a mistake such as registering for two overlapped classes. If not, they probably should have gone to a different school.

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