Enrollment column lacks substance
While the Academic Affairs Commission welcomes constructive criticism, sentiments ungrounded in any sort of evidence, experience or foresight are less helpful, as demonstrated in M. Austin Margolis’ “Classes a priority? Not with this enrollment” (Jan. 25).
Margolis states that the reforms “benefit only a small portion of upperclassmen who should have taken a few lower division classes as underclassmen.”
As a freshman, it is difficult for Margolis to appreciate the fact that upperclassmen have no reason to avoid taking prerequisites.
Ask any political science student: Under the current provisions, it is necessary to claw one’s way into lower division classes regardless of how quickly one starts.
Furthermore, the article mentions that priority enrollment during both winter and spring is “an important aid for freshmen” that “allows them to get used to putting together their own schedule.”
This argument is just one example of the contorted logic Margolis uses throughout the article to make the facts fit his perspective.
He quotes me as saying that the goal for these proposed changes is to “level the playing field,” a claim he says he finds untrue.
Of course the claim is untrue when universally applied; it was specifically said in reference to the proposed exclusion of units from Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses in determining appointment times.
Not all high schools offer the same number of college-level courses.
As such, there is no reason to penalize a freshman entering from one of these schools by relegating him or her to the end of the enrollment appointment pool.
Margolis neglects to mention this and other crucial facts and seems content with the current enrollment system in which over 60 percent of the undergraduate population has “priority” enrollment.
In this way, Margolis manages to invent a narrative of contrived conspiracy that pits underclassmen against upperclassmen in the struggle for enrollment.
Addar Weintraub
Academic Affairs commissioner 2007-2008
Third-year, comparative literature and public health