New and Improved

EXCUSE us if we're a bit confused. We are only students, after all. Normally, though, Harvard upperclassmen register on the day classes start. We should have 10 days of shopping period to choose classes. Student organizations are usually allowed to recruit freshmen at registration. Once, Harvard students could boast about the simplicity and painlessness of the starting-the-year process as compared to other schools.

The problem is, none of us students is completely sure what happened this year. It seems that there were lots of little changes and experiments with the system designed to improve efficiency. Harvard thrives on efficiency, after all. But everyone was notified about them slowly, on little signs around school before the end of last year, or flyers sent to our homes over the summer, or not notified at all. Who could know that all these little changes would add up to big headaches?

This year Harvard's Registrar Margaret Law decided to put registration on a Friday before the start of classes, rather than on the same Monday. This was done so students wouldn't miss any classes they wanted on Monday by waiting in registration lines. Oh, wait. On Monday we had to go wait in line to have our i.d. cards validated anyway. Of course, registering on Friday was still necessary because shopping period was shortened to seven days, a decision the faculty made so that professors could assign sections and start assignments sooner. Oh, wait. Seven days really means only five days to attend classes since there are as yet (fortunately) no classes on Saturday or Sunday. Actually, we'd better call that four days since a lot of classes don't hold lectures on Fridays, and study cards are due that day.

BUT if you're Jewish, you really only get three days of shopping period, because of Yom Kippur, which falls on Wednesday this year. Harvard reacted to these scheduling conflicts with typical aplomb; it ignored them, although it did manage to move freshmen registration to Sunday because Rosh Hashanah fell on a Monday.

Still, that doesn't explain why student organizations couldn't set up tables and recruit freshmen. That was a decision made by Dean of Students Archie Epps III--who forgot to notify student groups of the change--because they wanted to give "a new flair and new form of presentation" to the tabling. They sure did. The "Extracurricular Circus" was held last Friday night from eight to midnight. Of course, besides the fact that it may have interfered with the social plans of freshmen and upperclassmen who have better things to do on the weekend than read the literature of the Society for Creative Anachronism, there was the added problem that it gets dark at night. About half the organizations represented fit beneath the lighted tent in front of Lamont, and freshmen could barely see those outside without the help of flashlights.

But hey, Harvard's myriad bureaucracies are nothing if not efficient. It is safe to assume that the decisions made by Epps, Law, the faculty and the i.d. office were a model of efficiency, executed completely according to plan. The only trouble seems to have been that they didn't tell each other what would be going on, let alone ask students how these plans would affect them.

If it were up to us, we would put registration and i.d. validation for all students on a Monday with organizations tabling behind Memorial Hall. Classes could begin meeting on Tuesday, and study cards due a week later, so there would be two or three class meetings before decisions about courses had to be made. But, then again, what do students know about efficiency, anyway?