STAFF EDIT: All is fair in love and WebReg

Sunday morning kicked off the beginning of WebReg week for the spring 2010 semester, and as the first batch of students hovered over their computers waiting for the hour to turn so they could obtain their perfect schedule, some were left out, either because of the last number of their Boston University identification number, their school or their class. The stress involved with registration is a universal plight ‘- all students, whether they register at 9 a.m. or well past the afternoon, experience that unpleasant anxiety as seats dwindle and graduation requirements loom.

But the WebReg process, albeit nerve-racking and sometimes downright disheartening, is a necessary evil that could be a lot worse. The number system rotates every semester, so people with early registration times also become the people with late registration times, and lowerclassmen register later but will someday become upperclassmen and have their chances to register earlier. Any other system would be unfair because making the registration process subjective at such a large, diverse university, where sometimes students are just numbers, would be unfeasible. Aside from the athletes, who get priority registration times for non-academic and thereby arguably superfluous reasons, most BU students get a fair and objective chance at getting the classes they want and need. The athletes are the only demographic within BU to get automatic priority registration times, so that their schedules won’t conflict with practice and game times. This is patently unfair, considering the difficulty other groups of students, like the BUCOP crop, face when trying to meet all of their requirements. But since BU’s athletes contribute monetarily to the university, whereas the rest of BU students only contribute intellectually, it isn’t surprising that they would receive favors.

Unless one is an athlete, the only real way to make WebReg work for oneself if one has an unfortunate number is to manipulate the system. Asking upperclassmen or people with earlier registration times to hold classes is not explicitly against university policy, and emailing professors begging for a seat in a full class might be considered desperate by any observer who hasn’t gone through the web registration process themselves. In the same way that the WebReg process is a cutthroat one, taking advantage of its loopholes is not a practice for the weak. At the end of the day, all BU students are BU students of equal worth, all pay the same tuition and all deserve to face the same obstacles and indulge in the same opportunities. The current student body chose BU because of these opportunities it promised them ‘- they shouldn’t be so quick to give up when it comes to taking advantage of them.