Students wanting to enroll in a Core course that will teach them about footbinding, ants or architecture will have to rely on the luck of the lottery this fall.
Three Core courses--Foreign Cultures 62, Science B-15 and Literature and Arts B-18--have already been lotteried or will be lotteried soon, according to Elisabeth Swain '63, assistant director of the Core program.
Swain said that fewer courses than usual are being lotteried this year, a fact which she attributed to students "spreading out" instead of "ganging up." Usually more Literature and Arts B courses need to be lotteried, she said.
Last fall, the Core office held lotteries for three Literature and Arts B courses and for Science B-15, a course in evolutionary biology.
The harshest lottery was in Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society James L. Watson's Foreign Cultures 62, "Chinese Family, Marriage and Kinship: A Century of Change." In that course, approximately 350 students vied for 135 spaces, Swain said.
An assistant to Watson said yesterday that she had been "dealing with students pleading to get into this course all day."
Foreign Cultures 62 is a new Core course that can be counted for either the Foreign Cultures or the Social Analysis categories of the Core. The 350 students who went into the lottery may have been drawn by the low difficulty rating--2.4 out of five--that an earlier version of the course received in the latest edition of a University-produced guide to courses.
Swain said that the Watson course had to be lotteried because there was a limited number of qualified teaching fellows available. And enrollment in Literature and Arts B-18, a studio design course, was limited by shortages of art studio space, she said.
Top Priority
Top priority in Core lotteries is given to seniors who need the course to fulfill their graduation requirements.
No one answered the phone yesterday afternoon at the office of Baird Professor of Science Edward O. Wilson, who is teaching Science B-15, or at the office of Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies Louis J. Bakanowsky, who is teaching the studio art course. Watson was unavailable for comment.
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