But this is still not you

When Tad Howard of the College notified me that I needed to declare my major by March 1, he did so in a friendly email whose tone that mixed “Hey can you do this thing for me?” with “Haven’t seen you in a while, buddy!” By comparison, undeclared students enrolled in the School of Foreign Service got something more along the lines of a tongue lashing on Friday:

“The deadline for major declaration is March 2nd. Please do not wait until the final week, as the deans’ schedule will fill up. Students who do not meet this deadline will be blocked for preregistration, and the fact that you missed an important deadline will be noted in your file.

No excuses such as ‘The dean’s schedule was filled when I tried to sign up, and I left for Spring Break early.’ You have been told to plan ahead.”

I’m never any keener to hear the SFS rendition of “It’s a Hard Enough Life” than the next non-SFSer, but having reading this and learned that it takes an essay along with a sit-down with a dean just to complete a pretty basic college process, I’ll at least give you the Gary Coleman lines of Avenue Q’s first big cast number.

After all, there’s nothing in this alarmist “SFS declare!” email or the links within the email communicating information about a third requirement for declaring your major, if you’re considering CULP or RSCT (regional studies): you have to go to a half hour info session this week.

That was buried in a link in January 12’s “declare!” email, and in the edition of the Globe, the SFS’s announcement board. Your attendance at an info session, therefore, was incumbent upon your searching of past angry emails or the SFS’s online bulletin (although many students have reportedly gotten off easy, their deans having told them the meeting is—er—skippable)—and if you’re getting a February 20 email about major declaration, you probably don’t have that kind of time.

So what’s really going to linger with me is not sympathy for the SFSer (sorry) but questions about the logic behind making them jump through so many hoops, especially superficial hoops, in the midst of midterms. In his email to the undeclareds in the College, Dean Howard notes that the College moved its deadline up by a week so the school “can have all major declarations processed by the time our new student information system goes live.” But whether or not the SFS chose this deadline for the same reason, it’s pretty poorly timed.

Photo taken from Flickr user fo.ol under a Creative Commons licence.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under News, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.