Faculty Senate should revise add/drop deadlines

By Staff Editorial     10/2/08 7:00pm

Back in January, when the Faculty Senate was in the process of approving the 2009-'10 academic calendar, the main concern of most students was that the senate kept spring recess on the books. What went relatively unnoticed by both students and some faculty, however, was that the add/drop periods starting in fall '09 had been cut in half (see story, page 1). This change, if kept, would be a serious detriment to the recent progress made towards giving students greater autonomy in the class registration process. The recent elimination of registration PINs means that students are now free take advantage of Rice's flexible shopping periods, which allow students to optimize their schedules with the most information possible about a particular course or professor. Of course, this benefit will be short lived if the newly accepted deadlines have the effect of forcing students into hasty decisions.

We understand certain faculty members' concerns that, under the current system, a student could theoretically walk into a class for the first time on the fifth week of the course. However, we feel that the administration should trust that the vast majority of undergraduates have more respect for their professors and their own educations than that scenario would indicate. While there will inevitably be the odd student who walks in after missing a full 12 classes, we feel that those exceptional occurrences should be handled by the individual professor. There is no reason to put in place an overarching policy to limit a phenomenon that happens rarely at best, especially when the same policy could restrict the decision-making abilities of the vast majority of students who do not abuse the system.

We strongly encourage the Faculty Senate to revise its calendar decision in time for the next school year.

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