Vers Libre | Students deserve flexible curriculum approach

Brenna Gilbert Opinions Editor

We’ve all been there before: pre-registration ends and you have not been registered in a single class. You’re not quite sure what happened. Your draw number wasn’t terrible; You showed up early for special permission courses; You’re not a freshman anymore. The best guess you can make is that everyone else in the entire school decided to enroll in exactly the same classes as you.

What sort of system are we encouraging when the breadth of a student’s education is determined by an arbitrary class draw number? This system, in its randomness, mirrors the lottery that is life. We cannot pick our gender, our race or our socioeconomic stature. But for $40,000 a year, we should be able to take each and every class that inspires us. The strength of our education and the consequential depth of our inquisitiveness will allow us to combat the molds into which our birth relegates us. Each student, and their family in turn, has worked very hard to get here. I will not allow my possibilities to be limited by a computer system.

Competition for classes gets worse every year. Consider the psychology department— the seminars are so notoriously difficult to get registered into that majors often worry that they may not be able to complete their major in time for graduation. What sort of archaic system guarantees that most English classes have less than 20 students while economics has to have 35 students in every introductory class to respond to the interest?

Vassar should strive for a more flexible and progressive approach to curriculum. I am not suggesting that students should determine the course selection—it is ridiculous to assume that we have an appropriate grasp on the possibilities of what we might learn. However, student interest in different classes should be met with thoughtfulness and action. If 50 students apply for a 30 person class, is there no way arrangements could be made to set up an alternate teacher or time for the class? Money should follow student interest in this case.

We should also consider those departments that may not have a huge number of majors, but are still home to students interested in obtaining a true liberal arts education. For example, most students will take an economics or political science class before they graduate to round out their studies. These departments, along with many others such as Women’s Studies, Africana Studies and Media Studies, form a critical basis for a student’s development. In becoming familiar with the systems and institutions that govern our lives and inform our indentities, our engagement with the world increases. As many students as possible should be able to take these classes and every class for that matter, or our school is doing a serious disservice to the world that it vows to change for the better.

Majors in these more fluid departments, however, should not be penalized by the massive influx of non-major students. More attention and care should go into mapping the path of students who cross over into other disciplines, allowing funds to follow interest and need rather than ebbing within purely departmental lines.

A competitive education should mean accumulating the knowledge and skills to flourish as an intellectual citizen and passionate worker, not lining up outside a professor’s office to beat out other applicants for a limited class. If Vassar wants to remain dedicated to its promise of serious and fair education, every effort should be made to ensure that classes are available to anyone who wants to take them.