Changes to the priority registration process ‘ which gives scholars, varsity athletes and resident assistants the ability to sign up for classes before most students ‘ will have them registering much later than they have in the past, according to Provost Mary Ann Swain. Effective for spring 2008 registration, any student eligible for priority registration will now only be able to register one day before their normal credit hours would have indicated.

A committee composed of campus professional staff discussed and researched information that was presented to Swain, who then made the decision to alter the registration policy.

According to Swain, the policy needed to be revised in order to allow classes to remain available to all students.

‘Priority registration had grown to the point where it seemed to fill up too many classes too early,’ she said in a statement made through a University spokeswoman. ‘I modified the arrangements so that classes would be more available to all students while maintaining some priority for all groups of students who had previously been given it.’

The problem of classes being routinely filled up by the end of priority registration contributed to the formation of the committee.

‘[The new policy] does not give a sophomore [Discovery assistant] access to senior classes that seniors need to graduate,’ said Head Registrar Terry Kelly Wallace.

Wallace said that she felt the policy needed to be revised in order to create ‘a more level playing field’ for students without priority.

‘If you keep adding more groups, pretty soon you start having more people with priority than don’t,’ she said. ‘I think the policy we came up with is much more fair to the students that are not in those groups.’

Matt Landau, the Student Association’s vice president for academic affairs-elect, however, feels that the decision to make these changes was reached unfairly, without student input.

‘There was an informal committee to review this. Unfortunately, this committee had no student representatives on it,’ he said. ‘Instead, it was a unilateral decision by Provost Swain, and I hope in the future, students are on every committee whenever an issue arises about an academic policy for students.’

Some students whose registration has been affected feel that the changes have too greatly diminished their ability to schedule around the activities that their positions require.

‘It seems kind of pointless to me because now it’s not really priority registration,’ said senior and Mountainview RA Aaron Savedoff. ‘It’s definitely not as advantageous as it used to be. It doesn’t even seem like it will give much priority at all.’

All RAs and DAs used to be able to register a day before normal students. Savedoff said that the performances of RAs and DAs may suffer because of scheduling issues.

‘It will make it much harder to coordinate staff meetings and hall government meetings around a time that all the RAs can do,’ he said.