While signing up for next year’s classes, some Lawrentians may have noticed that a printed schedule was not made available to students. The Registrar, Anne Norman, explained to The Lawrentian the department’s reasons for not printing the books. However, some students and faculty hope to see this change in the future.
According to Norman, there were several reasons that the books were not published this year, one of them being the numerous changes to the schedule after publication.
“There are a lot of changes,” said Norman.
“It is to everybody’s benefit to use the web version rather than the printed version.” Her concern is that students will sign up for classes only to change them later when they discover courses have been moved or canceled all together.
She believes the web is the easiest way for students to avoid this hassle. “As soon as we know it, [the changes are] published on the web,” said Norman.
A majority of students interviewed for this article commented that they would still like the printed version, while one was not upset by the change.
Junior Ryannah Tannarome said, “I feel that they should have printed copies available. It’s nice that they are online so they save paper, but a lot of people can’t access it as easily.” Ed Johnson, also a junior, agreed: “I just really feel that the paper copies are nice…to be able to mark them up and kind of look through them wherever you are without being tied to a computer lab or a computer in your room.”
Freshman Nick Heuer commented, “It makes it inconvenient.” But freshman John Giudicessi said, “I don’t care because they put it online.”
Several faculty members also expressed concern over the absence of the printed schedules. One of them was Professor Betrand Goldgar of the English department.
Goldgar began by saying, “I greatly admire the Registrar. I think she does a marvelous job here…Having said that I must add that I think that is was a mistake, probably, not to print a [schedule] for the students.”
He added, “It’s very difficult to thumb through the Internet. You can’t really search out other things as well as you can with a printed copy.”
Goldgar said that problems for his advisees began when they came across courses that were full. It was much more difficult for the students to find alternate courses without the printed version.
He said that he has even had students borrow and copy his schedule, as it was made available to the faculty. “I can see no reason why the faculty should have this available…and not the students” even if money is a concern.
When asked how she would respond to the students who still wish to have the schedule printed, Norman responded, “We can discuss that as a option. We can start printing it again.”
In addition to the students’ desire for the printed version, she added, “It will depend on institutional cost to do it…At this point, if the student wants the print out, they can print it off the web.”