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Student Presents Petition To Save Shopping Period

Faculty members chosen to lead curricular review committees

Less than a week before the full Faculty will debate preregistration, two students presented their case against the current proposal to the Faculty Council yesterday.

Nicholas F. Josefowitz ’05, who is also a Crimson executive, presented a petition he co-organized arguing against preregistration. The petition was signed by more than 1,250 undergraduates and sent to council members last month.

Undergraduate Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 was also present at the meeting.

“Speaking before the council was a sign that the Faculty understand that, given the number of signatures we received, this is an issue students really care about,” Josefowitz said.

The students focused their attack on how the current proposal—which requires students to get the signatures of their advisors and the professors for each class they want to switch—will limit student choice and push them into “safer,” more mainstream classes.

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Although a few professors at the meeting expressed concern over the logistics of the add-drop procedures, the majority said they strongly supported requiring students to register for classes a semester in advance.

And Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby has repeatedly said that he believes preregistration will increase course flexibility by reducing the number of classes that needed to be lotteried.

“It doesn’t strike me as rocket science to think about your classes a semester before,” he said.

However, Chopra said that though Kirby claims shopping period is not disappearing, in reality, it will be fundamentally changed.

“It is intellectually dishonest to say that shopping period will exist,” Chopra said.

Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris said he believes that Kirby’s current proposal would significantly change the nature of shopping. He added that he is not entirely opposed to preregistration, but that it ought to be rethought.

“Preregistration is a great idea with one major flaw, the add-drop period,” Harris said.

Harris said that he thinks the Faculty have yet to realize the potential burden of signing numerous add-drop forms.

He said he would recommend preregistration coupled with a more liberal add-drop period at the beginning of the semester in which students could change classes without obtaining the signatures of their professors and tutors.

Josefowitz and Chopra also presented an alternative proposal, which they said they view as a compromise with the Faculty’s plan. It would require students to update their Plans of Study midway through each semester, the time at which the current proposal would have them register for classes.

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