Reversing the drop deadline

School policy takes a turn in the wrong direction

By Josiah Prendergast
From the September 2005 Print Edition

Things got ridiculous for Berkeley in the ’60s, but at least they were good for an entertaining story here and there. For the freshmen in the crowd, pardon my bitching and moaning, but I’m already hitting up a psychiatrist for some drug powerful enough to convince me that the new drop deadline makes sense from an educational perspective. Forget some deranged theory about university officials going out of their way to make our lives difficult — this is just plain administrative negligence.

The purpose of an educational institution is to facilitate an environment that students may use to best enrich their knowledge. Since a wide variety of learning and teaching styles exists, most students — particularly new students — cannot possibly determine whether a particular professor fits their learning approach in what may be as little as four lectures (or two weeks, for those of you who swore never to touch math after high school).

Slight refresher course for those who haven’t heard: Beginning this semester, students will have only two weeks to drop or add a class. Cut down from the previous deadline of eight weeks, this new deadline provides much less time for important decision-making about scheduling and grades.

End of refresher course.

One could make the argument that this better prepares a student for the real world, but I’m majoring in political science — clearly the real world is of no concern to me. Students studying mechanical engineering set themselves up for a course progression that is rather requisite for their career field, but forgive me for liking a little course diversity. I can take a course purely on Marxism, followed by a little California politics, top it off with some American constitutional law, and demand that the world believe I am more useful for having done so.

If you’re riding the same jet-fueled gondola that I am, level with me for another minute or three. A lot of courses are offered with a variance of instructors. Political Science 2, for example, is offered some semesters as a course taught by Professor Robert Price and other semesters by Professor Darren Zook, recipient of the ASUC Outstanding Teacher Award. While other professors may teach the course from time to time, the point is that a sensible drop deadline allows for students to better determine whether the current semester’s professor is best for their personal intellectual advancement. It is simply a matter of allowing you to make an educated decision.

The new protocol also offers a rather counterintuitive example of responsibility in the modern era. Disregarding my own personal views on how consequences should follow stupidity like a shadow, the United States is full of loopholes and gradations. Credit cards are the best example I can find (only because Congress was dabbling with holding private filers of bankruptcy a little more accountable, but let’s not get too off track).

To teach responsibility, the university could apply a business approach to course scheduling. Extending my reference to credit cards, the university could hit students with a progression of drop fees. Like an interest rate, this gradual increase in cost over time would represent irresponsible use of credit. Stay in a class and pay nothing over normal cost; drop a class and pay a fee based on time spent registered in said course. As opposed to the new system, suppose CARS charged a student $10 for each week of registration prior to dropping a class. A fee of $10 times eight weeks times the number of students dropping a course equals more logical action on the part of UC Berkeley than signing Tedford to that new contract; and many a Cal Football fan celebrated that day.

Clearly there are problems with a monetary system, particularly for students on financial aid, but the idea holds in general that, rather than eliminate extra time for class negotiation, the administration should simply make it more difficult, more demanding, and ultimately, more worthy. Make students think more deeply and care more acutely about their decisions, and not only will dropped classes be reduced, but when someone does drop a class, they will do so with care.

The present system is a PR stunt like no other, and a boring one at that. With the vague façade claiming to help students get into classes, it is really a mechanism for rushing students out. For students who stay, hoping their uneducated guess pays off, welcome to Russian roulette. Didn’t the United States learn anything from the failure of Russian Cold War political backwardness?

We’re told that we have a voice and it’s about damn time we make it heard. We should be yelling for true educational justice almost as loud as we yell on a defensive third down. Our education is a service provided by the university, but it’s a service for which we pay. It may seem like a drop in the bucket, but our administrators, or at the very least their accountants, should take advantage of our willingness to pay for a few extra weeks of mulling. Just tell me to whom the check should be made out.

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