Many students have expressed frustration that the shorter add/drop deadline, instituted by the Office of the Registrar, is causing unnecessary stress during registration time. Most of the student concern centers around Experimental College classes and the demand that shorter registration places on students to organize their class schedules.

College senior Steven Kwan said that he “can understand why the College has a shorter deadline for add/drop” because of “constant problems with registration and waitlists,” but his biggest issue with the new policy is its effect on ExCos.

“I’ve taught an ExCo before, three semesters, and I know that it’s difficult to organize the schedule for both your classes and your own ExCo,” he said. “Reserving a class that doesn’t conflict with homework time and ExCo preparation time is very difficult.”

Kwan adds that “as an ExCo instructor you won’t know what your actual class size will be until the second or third meeting,” thereby making it “more difficult for ExCo classes and instructors.”

However, the new deadline not only makes it difficult for ExCo instructors to organize their classes but for participants of the program as well.

College senior Morgan Shelton has also struggled with signing up for ExCo classes, which the new add/drop deadline has made more difficult.

Technically, Shelton could have graduated last year, but as Senior Class President she is required by the College to stay the full year.

She wanted to register for an easy load and “use up [her] ExCo quota” but had registration problems based on her status as a student.

“All I need is one credit so that I can still receive financial aid,” said Shelton, but her registration problems are preventing this from happening.

“Now I have to run around tomorrow, even though I have a million and one things to do, to get this figured out before 4:30 p.m. [when add/drop ends],” she said.“I have to contact my ExCo instructor to see if I can get registered for the class but the person is not affiliated with the College, so I have to track this person down.”

This is one of the main problems that Shelton has with the new deadline. it does not take into account that. “ExCo instructors are sometimes not students or faculty and have other jobs.” This creates added stress, Shelton feels, especially with a shorter registration deadline.

Shelton admits that she will probably have to register for a “random class and probably end up not going to it,” when she could have “taken a class [she] really wanted to.”

The shorter deadline also creates an added effort students feel they must deal with to organize their class schedules given less time.

College junior Ezra Temko said, “It is a fight to get through all the paperwork, consent issues and registration bureaucracy after only a week and a half of classes.”

Nevertheless, some professors are in agreement with the new rule, such as politics professor and chair Benjamin Schiff.

Schiff believes that “the shorter add/drop deadline seems to have the desirable effect of bringing stability to the class sooner than did the longer add/drop period.”

Schiff admits that the deadline “reduces students’ flexibility in choosing courses; however, very high turnover rates in the old add/drop period added to the chaos and thus reduced the value of the first weeks of class. From my standpoint, this has been an improvement.”

When registration periods are short, as is the case for many first-year students, the new deadline can be problematic.

Katherine Zipp, a College first-year student had this problem with the new add/drop deadline.

“The first time I could register was on Monday, Feb. 7 at 2:30 p.m. and a little over a week later I have to have all of my classes figured out,” she said. “It is crazy and unnecessarily rushed. Now I am behind in a lot of my work because I spent the first week figuring out what to take and taking eight classes to find the right one.”

Kim Faber, instructor of Spanish and linguistics, had a different perspective.

“It’s convenient to have an earlier add/drop deadline so that I know sooner who is in my class and can solidify my roster,” she said.

“When students add later, which I generally don’t allow after the first week anyway, it’s a lot of extra work for me to get them extra copies of everything I’ve handed out and to be sure they’re ‘up to speed’ with everything we’ve already done in class.”

College first-year, Assiatou Diallo, said the new deadline makes it “tough for first-years because after that day whatever you decide for the class will appear on your transcript.”

Diallo also feels that the deadline is restrictive and does not allow students ample time to figure out what classes they want to take.

“It’s kind of scary, considering how much money is spent on us students being here to decide whether a class or a certain professor is worth spending money on or not. This deadline is kind of like we were in a shopping mart, we picked our classes and the deadline is the checkout with a no return policy for first years.”

To double-degree senior Reginald Patterson, the new deadline simply shows that Oberlin College is making changes that do not have the interests of the student body in mind.

“There is a pressure to make Oberlin more like other schools, but many of the changes are being done at the risk of students enjoying what they actually like to do,” he said.