Students may lose priority registration

A committee is currently investigating priority registration and is proposing changes to the current system. The main change proposed by the committee is to make priority registration need based.

“[Priority registration] was raised with the Associate Dean’s group,” said Registrar Reta Pikowsky. “They decided to appoint an ad hoc committee to take a look at it. On this group we have myself, the associate registrars, Dana Hartley from GTM, an undergrad rep, a graduate rep and a couple of the associate deans. So there is a pretty broad spectrum.”

The group is looking at several issues and complaints about the current priority registration system raised by students over the past few months.

“The first thing we looked at was who had [priority registration] and who wants it, and there is a long list of groups who want it,” Pikowsky said. “We came to the conclusion that there are problems [with the current system], which led us to drafting some recommendations to the associate deans.”

“The first [possible scenario] is it should just be need based,” Pikowsky said.

“One of the important questions we’ve been trying to answer is the issue of need versus perk, and of the people who have it, how many need to have it and how many have it as a perk,” Pikowsky said.

Currently close to 10 percent of the student body has some form of priority registration. The committee believes that number is too high.

“If everyone has priority registration it doesn’t do anyone any good,” Pikowsky said.

The issue of who has a legitimate need and who does not is something the committee is seeking to define.

“Students with needs are students with disabilities and in-season student athletes who have to be practicing or have to be at a meeting at a certain time,” Pikowsky said. “Look, for example, at students with disabilities. If you are in a wheelchair, you have a hard time navigating campus and need to be able to set up your schedule accordingly.”

“If you have something that requires you to be at a certain place at a certain time during the day, then that is a need,” Pikowsky said. “If it is just something that you like to do like you joined a club or something, that is not a need. The need cannot be being someplace where you have decided you should be.”

“Then what we would do is future need-based requests. We would say that in the future anyone who wants it has to present a need that can be documented. It would have to be somewhere at a specifically scheduled time, and it would have to be a reasonable obligation that you have as a student,” Pikowsky said.

If the system gets changed, those students who currently have it but do not have a need would cease to have it at some point in the future. “What we might recommend is that we phase it out for those who have it as a perk,” Pikowsky said. “[Students] would be notified that they are being phased out; that they have priority registration until a certain time, and then they would be back in with everyone else….We are not just going to pull the rug immediately out from all the students.”

Pikowsky said the timeline of phasing out the priority will depend on the program. “For some programs, if a promise has been made we will honor the promise for a reasonable amount of time,” Pikowsky said. “It depends on the particular program. If someone has advertised [priority registration] and it affects the following school year, they would potentially get it for Fall of ’06 and Spring ’07, but that would be it.”

Pikowsky said some programs may keep priority until students graduate.

Student opinions about priority registration were mixed. “I can see why some people need it, but I don’t think other groups need it,” said Pierre Jimenez, a fourth-year Aerospace Engineering major.

“I think athletes need priority registration because they have to fit practice and training into their schedules,” said David Chou, a second-year Architecture major.

The committee also looked at how to define priority registration.

“We’re coming to the conclusion that it is simply an earlier time ticket depending on the number of credits you have and/or your admission status,” Pikowsky said.

These recommendations still have to pass the Associate Dean’s group before implementation of any changes can begin.

“These are just recommendations we are making,” Pikowsky said.