The era of incoming freshmen pulling all-night scheduling sessions at summer orientation may be coming to an end.

A new committee appointed by Binghamton University’s administration is looking into the possibility of implementing a pre-registration process for incoming freshmen, allowing them the option of choosing their own courses, or having their schedule made by an advisor prior to orientation.

“Students were pretty vehement about the fact that their orientation was ruined because they couldn’t meet people, they couldn’t be social; all they could focus on was building that schedule and getting their four courses set,” said Jill Seymour, an undergraduate academic advisor for the School of Human Development and also the head of the committee.

While the committee has only met three times this year, and still has not reached any definitive decisions, Seymour said members are currently considering how to effectively move the registration process out of orientation and to give incoming freshmen the most information possible.

Sending an interest survey to incoming students in the spring and recommending courses based on their returned survey is one possibility the committee is closely examining.

“There are three students who serve on the committee and they were very, very adamant about the fact that students want choice,” Seymour said. “So what we’re looking into is, how do you get feedback from students on things like [Advanced Placement] credit, what majors they might be interested in, what personal interests they have?”

Though there has been some criticism over the suggestion of pre-registering, or strongly suggesting certain courses rather than letting freshmen completely plan their own schedules, Seymour feels that the pre-registration process would be more of a benefit to new students than a limitation.

“We’re not looking at block scheduling, we’re looking at pre-scheduling and we haven’t yet reached a consensus as to what that means,” she said. “Does it mean one course, does it mean two courses? I think all of us can agree that it doesn’t mean a full schedule.”

While the idea of pre-registration may sound like a foreign concept to many BU students, it is currently used by the Watson School of Engineering, whose students typically come to orientation with three out of their four classes already scheduled for them.

However, the concept may prove more difficult to implement in some of the University’s other schools, particularly Harpur College, where students have a wider array of courses to choose from and more requirements.

“Arts and sciences has been a horse of a different color,” Seymour said. “There are 20 million ways students can go, so how do you gather information from that set of students to help them make choices?”

Though the new system would provide students with the ability to enroll in the class or classes suggested in the interest surveys, Seymour stressed that the students would be under no obligation to register for the advised classes and would always have the option of changing their schedules around.

“I really do think it can benefit the students a lot,” said Michael Boykin, one of three students who sit on the committee. “A lot of incoming freshmen come in not knowing what they want, and it’ll knock out some of the fear and worries about what classes they’ll take and help them get on the right track.”

While Boykin acknowledges that the idea does have some drawbacks, such as limitation of the complete academic freedom Harpur has always prided itself on, he feels the pros far outweigh the cons.

“In terms of cons, being a Harpur student myself I do think it limits your choice.” Boykin said. “But to go back to the survey idea if [freshmen] put down what they are interested in, then ideally it wouldn’t be a problem.”

In addition to aiding in the often stressful registration process for incoming students, Seymour and many members of the committee feel that a pre-registration process would free up valuable orientation time for other activities.

“We would love to be able to do more community-building and leadership activities, which can’t happen with students spending nine hours preparing for registration,” she said.

The project is still too undeveloped for a timeline to have been established, and Boykin does not think that it is likely to be implemented before the fall of 2007.

“It wouldn’t be this coming summer. I could tell you that easily in terms of all the programs that would have to be changed,” she said.