Open-Air Courses Ancient History As Registrar Juggles Classrooms

On the first of August this year the office of Registrar Sargent Kennedy began making sure that Scandinavian 50 would have a roof over its head. On September 30th, when the last study card has been filed and the last irate professor has been moved to a big enough lecture room so that all his unexpectedly large group of admirerers can revel in his Ciceronian delivery, the job of assigning classrooms will be done--until the spring term.

Kennedy calls the process of matchup classroom, hour, and day with the requirements of each course and section "a geographical jig-saw puzzle." He starts with a few perennially large classes that are traditionally located in Sanders Theatre or the New Lecture Hall. Then he and his assistant, Mrs. Barre, begin filling out a cross-index chart developed by her husband.

After trying to predict the size of courses from the past record (predictions that have proved slightly more useless than Drew Pearson's), they fill in the chart with little dots to indicate filled lecture rooms. Then they go down the list of courses until each has a room that is commensurate with its expected size.

The greatest source of confusion comes from a course that is so popular that the assigned room can not hold the number that enroll. When Archibald MacLeish first came to Harvard, he was assigned a moderately spacious Sever room suitable for the limited numbers who could be expected to show up for an untried lecturer. By the time rescue teams cut their way through the horde of frantic culture-seekers innundating Sever, the adaptable Registrar rescheduled the course, but for a while MacLeish lectured al fresco on the steps of Memorial Chapel (see cut).

Another bane of the scheduling department are the professors who change rooms without telling anyone but a few privileged students. Such a one was the object of a frantic search several years ago. An Overseer of the University, hearing of this professor's excellent delivery, wanted to pay him a visit. Neither the class nor the professor were in their appointed room, and the would-be visitor was rather put out. Upon contacting the errant professor's department, Kennedy found that he had notified it of his intention to change rooms. Another visit by the Overseer to the new location revealed nothing in the way of class or professor. It was not until several harsh inquiries were made that Kennedy found out that the wandering sage had moved again, this time not even telling his department. Kennedy once toyed with the idea of letting an omniscient IBM machine take over his duties for him, but he has given up hope of relief from that source. How could the IBM machine know what to do with a flood of requests for a room on Mon., Wed., and Fri. at 10, the most popular hour? Kennedy smiles, pours over Mr. Barre's chart and says, "An IBM machine couldn't tell that Professor Jones' lumbago demands a ground floor lecture hall, or that Abernathy finds inspiration only with a northern light." No Scientla ex machina for Harvard.