I'm a senior with 130 credit hours who was supposed to graduate this semester. Like many other students faced with this same situation, I ran to an advisor with the invariable question I've asked since spring 2001: Why didn't I get my classes again?
I received the same answer I've heard for years: drop-add is based on seniority. Those with the most credits, and therefore closest to graduating, are first in line to get the classes they need. But if this were the case, juniors and seniors wouldn't loose seats to freshman and sophomores.
What makes these students exempt from the seniority myth is that they are members of the Barrett Honors College.
For the most part, the perks of being in various colleges on campus are equal. However, the University provides countless advantages to the students in the BHC. They receive on-campus housing past their freshman year, have increased access to merit-based scholarships, e-mail notification of new scholarships and more academic support than non-honors students.
ASU is sending a terribly negative message to the student body by giving so many excess perks to BHC. The University is saying that these students deserve a more timely and enriched education that the rest of the student population.
This sets a bad precedent, not to mention damages the morale of those not in the BHC. Many non-honors students are academic successes, but choose not to join BHC.
Numerous students, many of them engineering and physical/life science majors, rarely find footnote 19 classes (honors- only courses that offer smaller class sizes and more personalized attention) within their degree program.
In my four years in the biochemistry department, I haven't seen a single footnote 19 course that covers a major graduation requirement. Footnote 18 courses -- non-honors classes that require an extra project to receive honors credit -- aren't always an attractive option.
Many hard working "regular" students often supplement the time they could be spending on extra footnote 18 work to focus on an extra class in the semester or outside enrichment such as increasing their volunteer hours.
What worries me the most, after interviewing some BHC students who asked to remain anonymous, is that they consider footnote 18 classes a joke. They admit to hunting around for classes where the teacher requires the least amount of excess work -- sometimes only a single homework problem or a page-long essay.
I'm not saying all honors classes are a joke; I'm aware that many of them require intensive amounts of work. Just as it is a futile effort to say that one major is "better" than another, it's ridiculous to say that an honors student is better than one who isn't. Similarly, a 3.5 honors GPA doesn't indicate a student with more academic success than one with a 3.9 non-honors GPA.
The only reason for affording BHC such accolades is financial. Scholars are pipelines for bring money into the University through a multitude of financial donors. Successful students will probably be successful financially. If the University treats them well enough, current students may become generous alumni.
The University needs to shift its focus to see that there are many outstanding individuals in every department on campus. They are ignoring the fact that financial donors -- as we have seen from recent large donations to various colleges -- are interested in supporting the achievements of every college at ASU.
ASU claims to support diversity among its student population. At the same time, it is blatantly favoring one subset of students over another -- giving them registration and academic advantage over other hard-working students.
I believe BHC students deserve motivating perks to be a part of the college, but these perks should not be at the cost of the rest of the student body. Those students closest to graduating should get the classes they need in pre-registration before students who are not as desperate for the class.
This should apply to every student -- honors, athletes or otherwise. With such a large student body, class appropriation must be done in a way that supports timely graduation.
Thanks to four years of losing required class seats to pre-registration, I will be at ASU for an extra year while many of my honors college friends are graduating on time. If I had accepted the honors college's invitation instead of choosing to focus my time elsewhere, maybe things would have been different.
Bess Stillman is a biochemistry and English senior. Reach her at bess.stillman@asu.edu.
