The Registrar's Office has assigned seniors studying abroad this semester with junior registration times in an attempt to streamline the registration process for study abroad students. Several seniors, citing a lack of sufficient notice from the Registrar's Office, assumed their registration times would fall in line with the rest of their class and were confused by the discrepancy.
Seniors this semester register today, a day before junior registration. Despite their senior status, members of the Class of 2011 studying abroad or in an off−campus program are not accorded priority over juniors in the same situation.
The decision to group seniors abroad with juniors was intentional, designed to give all study abroad students, most of whom are juniors, a single registration time, 8 a.m. on Wednesday, according to Jo Ann Jack, the manager of the registrar for the School of Arts and Sciences.
"There was no mistake," Jack said in an e−mail. "All students abroad are assigned a junior time since the majority are juniors."
A few seniors studying abroad this fall noticed a discrepancy between the day the Registrar scheduled them to register and the day they were supposed to register as seniors. The students contacted the Registrar's Office and had their registration time changed to the senior registration day.
The Registrar's Office, Jack said, agreed to upgrade upon individual request those seniors who notified them directly about their registration time.
"A couple of seniors contacted us and we updated their time to senior," Jack said.
One of those seniors, Christopher Snyder, who is spending this semester in Washington, D.C., on the Tufts−in−Washington program, said changing his registration time to the seniors' date just took a simple e−mail to fix, but deemed the registrar's practice problematic.
"I'm grateful that the registrar changed my time back to the senior time," Snyder said. "I just hope that their procedures change so this doesn't happen in future years."
Snyder noticed that his registration time was on the day that juniors register only because he received two e−mails from the Registrar's Office that contradicted each other. The first, sent on Oct. 19 by Student Services to all graduate and undergraduate students, listed the registration dates by class year, indicating seniors' registration date as Nov. 9.
A second e−mail from the Registrar's Office arrived shortly after, which Snyder said was presumably addressed to students currently abroad. The e−mail told study−abroad students to register on Wednesday, the same day the junior class registers for courses.
"My first thought was that this e−mail was a template sent out to all students [studying abroad] but wouldn't apply to me anyway because I'm a senior," Snyder said. "But I always just assume any e−mail I get might be something I have to deal with."
Snyder sent an e−mail to the registrar asking for clarification. The office switched his registration date to the senior day to register.
"The system is automated and bases itself on history," Barbara Clark, a Student Services representative in the Registrar's Office, said. "If someone calls to question their time, we will immediately investigate their time. Only for a legitimate reason can we correct their time."
While changing their registration date from the juniors' to seniors' assignment was simple, Snyder and senior Mireille Gallegos, who is studying in Chile this semester, said it was more difficult to figure out they had not been given a senior time in the first place.
"Since I'm a senior, it didn't even occur to me that I could be given a different registration time," Gallegos wrote in an e−mail to the Daily. "I know it's uncommon for seniors to go abroad, but I didn't think that I would automatically be given a junior's registration time."
Snyder and Gallegos also thought it confusing that the onus was on seniors to take action to change their assignment when it was not even clear their assignment was after the majority of their classmates' registration times.
"Seniors studying abroad have to catch this error," Snyder said. "And then they have to contact the registrar of Student Services just to get registration time they were supposed to get."
Gallegos believed that giving a senior a junior registration time because he or she is abroad seemed unfair.
"While it was easy to get the registration date moved up, it was inconvenient that it was not accounted for in the first place," Gallegos said.
If she had not noticed her registration assignment was a day late, she said, she may not have been able to get into classes required for her to graduate on time because they are likely to fill up quickly.
"In my case, it could have been absolutely disastrous," Gallegos said.
Gallegos believed that the Registrar's Office should modify their practices to better account for seniors studying abroad.
"I think that the practice should be changed such that it is not assumed that all students abroad are juniors," Gallegos said. "If for some reason the registration time can't be made to automatically take senior status into account, there should be more notices than a single e−mail that assumed everyone registered on the same day."
Snyder agreed.
"It's more the prospect of those seniors who wouldn't have found out about it ahead of time," Snyder said. "Unless the registrar changes how they do registration times, this seems bound to happen again."
The Registrar's Office for now is not considering implementing a change to the system for senior study−abroad students, according to Clark.
"It's very rare that a senior goes abroad," Clark said. "If it's going to become more of a prevalent thing, [the administration] is going to have to let us know about that."
