Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash
By Lauren Runkle, Contributing Writer
For students at Susquehanna University, class registration has always been a two-week process in which we have to wait for the results instead of immediate gratification. This year, however, the process was changed to a live registration format.
While this gives students an immediate response about whether they got into their top choice classes, it also gives way to other questions about the system and whether it gives a fair advantage to people with specific majors or minors.
The new process still gives priority to higher grade levels, with this year’s rising seniors having their live registration first on April 13, then rising juniors on April 16, and finally rising sophomores the week after on April 21. This priority is important, since higher grade levels need to get into their leftover requirements for graduation.
It is good that Susquehanna gave rising sophomores a few extra days in between to get their classes together, since many of their chosen higher-level classes filled up with rising juniors and seniors.
As a rising junior, this process felt a little daunting since I had never done it before––so I can only imagine how the rising seniors felt after being used to the old process for so long. The first issue I had with the live registration was how early they opened it. Although a working adult may be used to being awake at 6:30 a.m., this is early for college students.
It is good that we can make up the list beforehand, but perhaps pushing it back a couple of hours would be better for students. Many students are going to sleep later while in quarantine, so allowing them to get their proper amount of sleep before dealing with a new form of registration would have been preferred.
Some other universities start live registration at midnight, which I think is a more realistic time for a college student to be awake. Although students may not be able to contact their professors, advisors, or registrar that late at night, picking a more realistic awake time for everyone could help reduce the stress involved with a live registration process.
I know it was hard for me to sleep well beforehand with the added stress of having to set an alarm and wake up super early.
The next and most prominent issue of contention is whether the new live registration truly gives preference to students with majors or minors that require specific classes.
When 200-something students submit at the same time, the system overloads. I had to open a new tab to refresh and resubmit my own classes. While that worked for me, it did not work for a lot of Susquehanna students.
One of my friends and fellow students Sydney Hergan had the system fail to recognize her as a rising Junior, so she was not able to get access until later, in which it showed all of the classes she had chosen as full.
This began her needing to send frenzied emails to the different professors. Another problem with having to email specific professors to get into their classes is if there is not yet a certain staff member listed––there is basically no one to email.
This was one issue among many that she also ran into with trying to get into the classes after 6:30 a.m.
My other friend and fellow student, Jess Saylor, had it fail to recognize a class she had already taken, which was a prerequisite for a class she was trying to get into because the name of the class changed.
If the registration system cannot even recognize a name change for a class, can it recognize everybody’s majors and minors at once? If people with a certain major are trying to get into a respective course and it fills up, how can we be certain it gave a fair assessment of everyone registering?
There are many questions students have, especially with a new registration style.
Being home during all of this also means that students have to rely on their home Wi-Fi, which could be faulty. This could also impact their chances of registering on time and making a stressful situation even more so.
Although the coronavirus and quarantine are not something the university can control, perhaps being more lenient with registration may have been more helpful.
Overall, I am sure Susquehanna will use this new live registration as a learning experience to either go back to the original registration style or improve the live method so that it does not crash and recognizes all students according to their grade level and major/minor.
Susquehanna has shown its competency in handling the current viral crisis by taking its time with drastic decisions, like closing for the whole semester and cancelling GO trips in the fall.
In my opinion, these have all been with ease and with immediate student awareness, so we are not left in the dark about our education. Hopefully the university takes the same assessment-style approach when considering other things like our class registration.
