Many Boston University English majors skipping class are not going to the movies, sleeping in or playing video games — they are waiting in line for hours to register for upper-level classes.
Instead of utilizing the university’s online registration system to sign up for their courses, these students in the College of Arts and Sciences are required to sign up through visiting English Department Coordinator Margaret Johnson’s office, a process of making sacrifices to wait in long lines.
English Department Senior Administrator Harriet Lane said the registration process is designed to offer a priority to English majors who need to take upper-level courses that are popular electives sought by non-English majors. Lane said small class sizes make it impossible to accommodate everyone.
“The normal limit on upper division classes is 30 students,” she said. “English classes are not large lecture courses, so there has to be a limit to the size of them. Wouldn’t you rather have 30 students in a class than 150?”
The university’s WebReg system cannot create a password for English majors that would allow students to register online, said English chairman James Winn.
“The computer is very cumbersome about this,” he said. “It seems utterly incapable of blocking a course if you haven’t had the prerequisites.”
Winn said the 40-word description listed on the university’s web registration lacks an adviser’s in-depth knowledge of a class. He said advisers can look at a students’ transcripts and tell if they are ready for the class.
“The knowledge we possess is a valuable thing,” he said. “We feel we’re giving our students a superb value for their tuition dollars.”
Johnson, whose job entails meeting with students to determine their eligibility for a class, said it is important to have face-to-face interaction with students to asses if they are ready to take a particular course.
“I find out whether they’re English majors,” Johnson said, “and whether they’ve met the prerequisites for the courses.”
While students can use WebReg to sign up for any 100-level English course that does not require an instructor’s permission, English majors usually take advanced courses requiring administrative approval, indicated by stickers Johnson gives to students’ registration cards.
Students said they begin to register for upper-level English courses the day after their normal Sunday web registration when Johnson’s office opens at 9 a.m. on Monday morning.
“I put a higher priority on getting into the classes I want than being on time for the classes I have,” said CAS sophomore Lauren Becker.
Students said Johnson arrives one hour before her office technically opens at 9 a.m. on registration day because she expects students will be waiting for her. English major Jacqueline Porte said she strives to get a decent spot in line to ensure she will get into her upper-level classes.
“There are usually 20 people ahead of me,” the CAS sophomore said, “which means they must have woken up at six. If I don’t wake up on time, I’m not going to be able to take [a particular] teacher at [a certain] time.”
English major Elizabeth Moser, a CAS sophomore, said although it is necessary to restrict certain classes to English majors and minors because the courses are in high demand, she wishes the registration could have more online components.
Porte, Moser and Becker said they do not have complaints about the advising process, but prefer web registration to waiting in line for about an hour and a half, which puts them at risk for being late to class and other appointments.
Porte said students who wait until around noon to register usually do not get into the classes they want.
Winn said small class sizes are necessary because of the many writing assignments given to English students.
“All English courses involve papers,” he said. “You can’t do close and careful marking of papers in a large class. Our aim is not to be difficult or exclusive. Our aim is to make the best fit between the faculty member, the student and the course.”
Winn said a faculty adviser’s personal attention to a student cannot be replaced by electronic registration.
“We want to have a series of conversations with you,” he said. “The student is meant to take on a certain responsibility toward shaping a major. You can’t do that on a machine.”
CAS Associate Dean of Students Wayne Snyder said other CAS departments sometimes require students to receive permission from the instructor or department before enrolling in a class.
“It is very common, also, when registering across schools,” he said in an email. “If you are in CAS and want to take an SMG class, for example, you would need to get permission in general.”
Snyder said, for example, CFA major classes are restricted to only music and fine arts majors, and CAS students cannot take them at all.
“This is because they want to preserve the quality and nature of these classes,” he continued. “If a painting class has ‘amateurs’ in it with little experience of painting, then those students in the class who are seriously pursuing painting as a major will suffer, because the whole experience of the class will be different.”
Classical studies department chairman Loren Samons said no students are barred from his department’s courses because classical studies is not offered as a major.
“Some are eliminated through prerequisites,” he said in an email. “As long as a student has completed the necessary prerequisites, the department will not exclude him or her from a class.”
International relations department Chairman Erik Goldstein said the web registration system “isn’t structured in any way for us to be able to exclude students.”
“Occasionally, there are prerequisites for courses,” he said. “We can usually check with their transcripts to see if they’ve completed the prerequisites. We deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”