Julia Kane ‘27
Opinions Editor
It’s November: not only the month of election day and Thanksgiving, but also time for Holy Cross students to enroll in their classes for the subsequent semester. Although it is always exciting to see the newly released course catalog and explore what classes may interest you, the fun essentially stops there. When it comes time for each student’s class’ two days to enroll in their classes, there are always countless issues that ensue, ranging from error messages to classes filling in the blink of an eye. Personally, I have had a couple of successful endeavors in class enrollment, as well as my fair share of qualms with the system and its counter-intuitive behavior.
Upon asking several students of different majors and class years, I noticed that there were specific problems mentioned repeatedly. A main problem with the STAR enrollment system here at Holy Cross is the hidden amounts of seats that are reserved for majors. Although it is necessary to save seats for majors, as they may need the class to stay on track to graduate, I am strongly opposed to students not being able to see how many seats are reserved. Students may think that they have a good likelihood of getting into their choice class, only to be turned away due to reserved seats. If STAR were to display the precise number of seats saved for the major, all students would be more aware of the restrictions and their odds of getting in. In conjunction with this, STAR should automatically show students if they are eligible for a certain class, based on their major and profile qualifications. This would rule out many issues that stem from students thinking they can take a class when in reality, it is only open to certain groups of students.
Another significant component of enrollment is permission codes. Permission codes are given to students, upon request, by professors to reserve them a seat in their class. This saves the student from fighting for the class when enrollment opens at 7 AM, instead allowing them to enroll smoothly with a guaranteed spot. Although I have had good experiences with permission codes, I believe that the system should be standardized among professors. It is not necessarily fair for some professors to administer permission codes, while others tell students they do not, giving certain students a leg-up on the competition. Even if not all professors want to give out permission codes, it should be a department-wide decision and each department’s policy should be published for students to see. That way, the playing field is more leveled and it alleviates some of the stress from enrollment.
If the system were to be restructured entirely, one option would be to have a ranked-choice system instead of picking 2 classes each day. Within ranked-choice, each student would work with their advisor to create a list of more than enough classes they would like to take or would fit with their major. Based on class capacity and availability, students could be given at least some of the choices on their list, even if they were unable to get every class they wanted. This would rule out the possibility of missing out on enrolling in essential classes due to connectivity issues, computer glitches, or other external factors that may interfere with a student’s enrollment.
Although I know it is impossible to create a flawless enrollment system, it could be improved in ways that would make the process noticeably more accessible to students. As this time is already hectic with exams, papers, and other academic expectations, students would feel much more comfortable knowing that there are fewer unknown factors that may complicate their enrollment. With these specific alterations, among other potential improvements, enrollment could become something that Holy Cross students look forward to instead of dreading.
Featured image courtesy of Collins Dictionary
Web Edited by Zexuan Qu ’28
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