The Towerlight, January 26, 1984

tl19840126-000 "The Towerlight Vol. 77 No. 14 PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 January 26, 1984 Post-Preregistration How you got what you got (if you got it) By Glenn Small Have you ever wondered by what form of magic that course request card you turned in-to the Registrar in November emerged a somewhat battle-worn schedule in January? Some will say it isn't magic at all, but a form of evil human bungling. Others will document cases of Registration workers dancing profanely around a massive heap of course request cards, in which the god of Fate is summoned to resolve a time con-flict. Still others will assure you its simply a matter of feeding those cards into a monoli-thic computer, which isn't done 'til after Christmas, thereby accounting for the two month interval. It is almost a disappointment to learn the truth. The truth is that pre-registration is a time consuming and meticulous process that is mostly done by hand. Pre-registration begins the moment the first course request card is turned in. It is given a number and assigned priorities according to a 9 point scale. After the first 300 cards arrive, they are bundled and taken to the first floor of the Ad-ministration Building, where they are key-punched in the data center. That done, they are shipped back upstairs to wait for the remaining cards to arrive. Of the 8,000 or so students who pre-register, says David Decker, associate director of registra-tion and scheduling, six thousand are turned in on the first five days of pre-registration. Those remaining generally flood in on the last two days. Once all course request cards are in and key punched, they are sent through the computer and an Edit report is done. The Edit: The Edit program is simply an eye which finds mistakes of course sections and num-bers. For example, if a person writes down a non-existent course number or a non-existent section, the Edit will point that out. ""This is why we ask the students to write out the course title on the back of the card,"" Decker explained. The Edit identifies the mistakes by bundle, and the person's card is pulled and corrected. But if a wrong number is put down which just happens to be another course, then their is no way to correct it. ""Then they're just in that course, and it's too late,"" Decker said. Sometimes the Edit may kick out new courses which it doesn't recognize because the department of that course hasn't sent the paper work to the Registrar. Those kind of er-rors are worked out with the departments. The Tally: When the Edit report certifies that course requests reflect accurately the courses desired, a Tally report is done. The Tally is a list of every course offered along with its sections. The Tally report also lists the spaces available in each section along with the number of spaces requested. The Tally gives Decker and his staff an idea of what changes can and must be made. Ruth-less scrtitinization of the Tally takes place, with special emphasis directed toward over and under-loaded courses. For example, if a business course, say one called ""Fundamentals of Dress,"" has room for thirty students and only 2 sign up, then Decker and the business department will look for ways to trade off the course with another that has a gross amount of students being closed out. Ap 0315p .ATIONS 4uisiter 0506.381 W F 1100a 11504 �...X 030 IR 0200p 0315p 433 LEC 030 IR 0330p 0145p GRIEVNCS& ARBITRATN PIT requisites: 0506 381 381LEC 030 T R 1100a 1215p 002 LEC 030 T R 0200p 0315p 1RGANZTNAL DEVLPMNT Prenquisiter 0506.361 EC 010 T I 1 0145p BUS POLICY Prerro W F ST ?X BUAD &r204.341 ST 25 Vinien ST 211 Solomo;t7 ST 214 SolorntJ, , BUAD 08013.4a Cs 13 Shane, CE 13 Shane,' BUAD 060& ST n3 BUAD Y OR CONS r6 Yr; 2234 The ""Fundamentals of Dress"" class would be killed, and another section of the heavily requested course opened. Deciding on what courses die and what courses gain sections in a process dependent on two factors. 1) If there is $ 2) If you can find an instructor. Money is one reason a course must be traded with another when making changes. ""We only have so much money for faculty, and the bulk of that is committed when we of-fer the courses for pre-registration,"" Decker said. ""It's harder than they [students] think to find an instructor,"" Decker said. ""Mass Com-munication, Computer Science, and Business are some of the toughest ones."" He cited Computer Science as an example. ""Those qualified to teach computer science are working in the field, and are unavailable to teach during the day."" And a big reason they are unavailable is that part-time teaching offers such a drastic cut in pay. But Decker says that Towson has a lot of leeway in making changes because a large part of the instruction is done by part-time faculty! ""If it's a part-time instructor, his salary is based on if the course makes it,"" meaning that half of the alloted spaces are filled. If a full time instructor has a course with less than half enrollment, he has the option of teaching the course anyway for free, and pick-ing up another course to make up for the last salary. Sectioning Sectioning�the actual placement of stu-dents into courses�takes place after the Edit and Tally. ""Here the priorities come into play,"" Decker said. A relatively unknown priority is actually when the card was submitted. For example, when all things are equal�major, class stand-ing, and so forth�the student who turned in his card first gets the course. Alternate sectioning�putting students closed out from one section into another of the same course�follows Sectioning. ""If a student is bumped from one section [of a particular course] the computer searches his schedule and attempts to fit him into an-other section of the same course,"" Decker ex-plained. ""A lot of people don't understand Alternate Sectioning,"" he continued."" A lot of them complain about it."" ""But, it's either Alternate Sectioning or the course they need is going to appear closed,"" Decker concluded. Scheduled/Unscheduled The Scheduled/Unscheduled report, which follows on the heels of the Sectioning reports, looks at how many course requests were in-deed granted. ""We look for students with three or more schedule errors,"" Decker said. Those who have more than three schedule errors are invited in for an unscheduled day of registration. ""That's the best we can do for them,"" he said. The spring Scheduled/Unscheduled report turned up two students who were closed out of all their requested courses. ""We researched and found out that the special permits weren't turned in."" The studentsare in Nursing and Occupa-tional Therapy, two areas where special per-mits are needed. ""It was fixed and the students will never See DECKER, page 2 Why someone would spend Two weeks in Nicaragua By James Hunt There was a time, during the the 1940's, when Americans vacationed in the warm, sunny climes of Nicara-gua and its capital, Managua, was hailed in song. Today, the small Central American country, which has been racked by civil war, natu-ral cataclysm, and poverty, attracts few Americans save for diplomats and, possibly, marines. And Kate McShane. McShane was one of seven Uni-versity of Delaware students who traveled to Nicaragua last summer. Her trip was funded in part by Tow-son State's Campus Ministries, from whom she had solicited a dona-tion last spring. McShane came back to campus shortly before Christmas. Though her talk was billed ""The Continuing Crisis in Central America,"" she dealt only with Nicaragua. ""I wanted to see first-hand the problems in Nicaragua,"" McShane said, explaining why she decided to spend two weeks of her summer in that country. What she saw was a country whose people were mired in poverty, but who possessed an engaging hos-pitality, and whose government was trying to expunge over a century of American influence on their culture, while projecting a good image to the United States. Poverty is perhaps the most prominent feature of Nicaragua, McShane said. Many of the country's 2.7 million people are uneducated peasant farmers, who, until power was seized by the Sandinista gov-ernment in 1979, were exploited by wealthy landowners. One such landowner was the country's former leader, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Before he was ousted four years ago, McShane said, he owned an estimated half the arable land in the country and 40 percent of the industry. ""One example of how low [Somoza] would go"" to exploit his countrymen, McShane said, ""occurred in 1972 following a devastating earthquake. ""Quite a bit of aid was sent in, but most of it was confiscated by Somoza ... as a result, much of the country is still in ruins,"" she said. Nicaragua has had a history of leaders like Somoza, McShane said. Most of them have helped to protect American interests, which have played a role in the island's func-tioning since the 1850s when an ""American entrepreneur named William Walker took over the island and set himself up as 'dictator,' "" McShane said. The Sandinistas, McShane said, have sought to wrest the country from American influence and intro-duce a number of reforms to help the lower classes, although their success has been debatable. One woman told McShane that ""she would still be working seven days a week whether she was under Somoza or the Sandinistas,"" al-though another woman noted that her children had ""begun to get involved"" since the Sandanistas took power. The country is plagued by ""incred ible shortages,"" particularly of trained physicians, many of whom have emigrated the country unable to make a living in private. Despite their anti-American orientation, the Sandinista govern-ment tried to make a favorable im-pression on their American visitors. ""It really struck me how much the Sandinistas would do just for a small group of seven,"" McShane said. ""They were aware of the influ-ence it would have back [in the United States]."" She recalled that a friend had told her before she left, ""You're going to see exactly what the government wants you to see, so what you say isn't going to hold a lot of worth."" She noted, though, that her group was allowed to wander freely with-out escort much of the time and travel where they pleased. In fact, she said, although the Sandinistas enforce censorship, the only time the group's camera equipment and tape recorders were confiscated was in the U.S. Embassy. Among the unpleasant aspects of the Sandinista government, she said, were their ""massive propaganda programs"" and the ""military-type atmosphere."" ""It wasn't intimidat-ing, but it conjured up a bad feeling,"" she said. Another bad feeling was the fear of the contras�the U.S.-backed right-wing rebel forces fighting to oust the Sandinista government� particularly in the rural areas where the contras frequently strike without warning. McShane's group never encoun-tered the contras, but on one occasion, stopped at night on a country road, they thought they had. ""It was a terrifying moment,"" McShane said, ""just to feel for a split second the kind of fear that these people live with every day."" Bad 'Dog' Latest T & A flick panned .. page 3 For whom the bell tolls A look inside the Stephens Hall bell tower (shown, at left) ....page 4 Fun on the half shell Stephen Hyde goes oystering and lives to tell about it page 7 Parking getting farther from campus as construction begins By Terie Wolan If you thought parking at the University was difficult last semester, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the parking garage will be open next fall�the bad news is that while the garage is under construction, 350 parking spaces in lot 11A, those closest to the Univer-sity Union won't be available. To compensate for these spaces, the Univer-sity is opening or leasing alternate parking areas for commuter students until construction is completed this summer. Construction was de-layed recently, according to Katie Ryan, direc-tor of University Relations, because of the se-vere cold and snow, however completion of the Project should still remain on schedule. The alternative parking areas are not as close to the main campus, but they should help allevi-ate the parking ,.. 'inch. Most of the spaces in Lot 11 were designated for carpools, so Auburn Drive, which runs through the Towson Center lots, is now one way so that approximately 100 spaces will be avail-able along both sides for carpool permit holders. The University is also leasing 70 spaces in the visitors parking lot of St. Joseph's Hospital on Osler Drive. Cars will be allowed to enter this lot only between 7 and 10 a.m. Shuttle buses will run from Osier Drive in front of the hospital every twenty minutes during these hours. Ryan stressed that parking permits are re-quired to park in these areas and that a student gate-keeper will only admit those cars with per-mits to the St. Joseph lot. The third alternative is to park at the Timon-ium Park and Ride lot on Deereco Road, off of Padonia Road. There are 150 spaces available, and shuttle buses will run to' the University every twenty minutes between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. ""Frankly, this is the most inconvenient al-ternative,"" Ryan said. But the advantage is that students don't have to buy a parking per-mit to park there. The cost of leasing parking areas was included in the projected cost of the garage, Ryan said, so there should still be no cost increase for park-ing permits this fall. And along with these mea-sures, the University is negotiating with Balti-more County to open up more parking on Cross Campus Drive. When complete, the parking garage will pro-vide 620 new student spaces, 170 new faculty/ staff spaces, and 59 new visitor parking spaces. AREA WN IBLN 0. cARPo0 pAsziciNc+?,� 4 I SWAT CA MPUS ,x4e1.4 4olsoaau. oa ST JOE HOSPITAL .17:4 TICia T DOOM snaePH 1:6.ter 11 Alternative parking is available at St. Joe's and along Auburn Drive for permit holders only. Anyone can park in the lot (right) near the Md. State Fairgrounds. PADcW .4 mt.J. CUL "