Scheduling Mistakes Arise on First Day of Shopping Week

Scheduling mistakes forced some students to crowd into classrooms and press against doors on Monday, the first day of shopping period.

Some classes were booked for the same classroom at the same time Monday. Discrepancies also arose between the websites of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Registrar, sowing confusion among students, as the spring 2014 semester got underway.

According to Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson Colin Manning, Philosophy 34: “Existentialism in Literature and Film” and History 1878: “Ottoman State and Society” were both assigned to the same Emerson Hall room at 11 a.m. Monday.

“We have learned late this afternoon that there were, in fact, two courses that were inadvertently booked for the same classroom today,” Manning wrote in an email. “At this time, we are not aware of any other double booked courses.”

The conflict was temporarily resolved when the history class moved into a lecture room next door, said Sean D. Kelly, chair of the Philosophy Department.

The Registrar has not yet found a permanent solution for when the courses should meet on Wednesday, Manning said, but it is working with Harvard University Information Technology services to resolve the issue before the semester gets well underway.

As well as double booking classes, the Registrar also listed meeting times and locations of some classes differently than it did on Harvard iSites, a server that compiles course websites.

Two lecture courses that tend to attract many students—English 178x: “The American Novel: Dreiser to the Present” and Economics 1123: “Introduction to Econometrics”—met in an overcrowded Sever 113 at 10 a.m..

“I was walking along with a friend who is not interested at all in English, and I’m not interested at all in economics,” said Al Fernandez ’17, who shopped English 178x. “Then we walked into the same classroom, and he was like, ‘You’re wrong,’ and I was like, ‘No, you’re wrong.’”

According to the Registrar, Econ 1123 was supposed to meet in Harvard Hall at 10 a.m..

“The course location information on the iSite of any course that was held in the fall and which carries on into the spring term potentially may not have been updated by today,” Manning wrote.

Other courses, however, were overcrowded due to unexpected student interest, not technical discrepancies.

Kimberlyn Leary, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who teaches Sociology 169: “Negotiation and Conflict Transformation for Policy and Practice,” said that although she taught her first class in a large room, almost every seat was occupied and students had to find space along the walls in the back of the room.

“I think everybody knows because it was posted that there’s a cap on the enrollment that 50 students will be able to take the class,” Leary said, adding that she plans to use a non-preferential course lottery to determine which students will be able to take her class.

“Unfortunately I’m going to have to keep it at 50 because we do so much interactive work, and it’s already tight in the room we have.”

Leary, who said her course was popular during shopping week last spring as well, added that she is excited and pleased about the number of students who expressed interest in her course.

“It’s pretty fun for professors too at the beginning of the semester,” Leary said.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at mbernhard@college.harvard.edu.