MANY STUDENTS consider Commercial Law to be one of the best courses at the University. Yet some students in the College of Arts and Sciences had to wait for more than a week from when registration began to try to get into the few slots left over after students in the Commerce School enrolled. Commercial Law is a practical and important class that all students should be able to sign up for at their regular registration time. The only way to do this is to increase the number of sections offered for the course.
Since the course deals with law, and there are many pre-law students in the College, they should have an opportunity to take this class. Commercial Law is particularly useful and practical because much of law does involve business and the course certainly would be a useful precursor to law school. If a student in the College wanted to take classes that involved law, he also could take courses in the government, sociology or economics departments, to name a few. But under the current system, third years have to wait for over four days and second and first years have to wait for a week before signing up for this course.
The Commerce School contends that commerce students must get priority registration because Commercial Law is a core requirement necessary for graduation. Rebecca Leonard, assistant dean for student services at the Commerce School says, "The rationale for this approach is simply to make sure that students who need to meet certain courses for major requirements have first priority." This view does make sense. Commercial Law is a requirement for Commerce students, and therefore they should get priority registration under the current situation.
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The College and the Commerce School need to come up with a solution to the problem. Fourth years in the College usually do manage to get into the class, and this is a credit to the Commerce School and Prof. John Wheeler and his efforts to make sure that all students can take the class before they graduate. But first-, second- and third-year students in the College often are left out in the cold. These students should not have to wait until they are fourth years to get into the class.
The most obvious solution would be to have more Commercial Law sections, which would be open to all students at the University. The College must work to meet the needs of students by putting pressure on the Commerce School and helping them achieve this goal. The Commerce School clearly looks out for its own in giving Commerce students priority registration. The College must do the same by making sure that sections are available for College students and not simply leaving the decision up to the will of the Commerce School.
There are many courses at the University that aren't as high in quality as Commercial Law or taught by professors as enthusiastic as Wheeler. Students have a right to take good classes with enthusiastic professors no matter what department or major they are offered in. Just because a course happens to be in another department should not make a huge difference as to enrollment in it. Commerce students may consider it a benefit of the Mcintire School that they have a right to take advantage of. But almost all classes in the College are open to Commerce students, and some Commerce students even major in a subject at the College while enrolled in the Commerce School. For example, Economics 301 and 302 are required for a major in economics, yet these classes have no restrictions placed on them. The Commerce School does offer a few classes for non-Commerce majors, but this is not enough to stop the deluge of e-mails that Wheeler receives from students about getting on a waiting list that does not even exist.
The Commerce School should take advantage of the crossover appeal of the course. An example of this approach is the physics department's How Things Work. This course attracts many non-physics majors and teaches them some fundamentals about physics while at the same time attracting students to the physics department. Considering that applications to the Commerce School were down this year, maybe the Commerce School should look into the idea as a way of galvanizing interest in the school.
Students already have enough trouble with registration each year. Any halfway decent class usually is filled up within the first few days and students are forced to try to get on waiting lists and course action their ways into the class. This is a result of the fact that the University does not have enough professors and apparently not enough good classes. Usually students must wait for Echols Scholars and upperclassmen to register before they get a shot. Now the Commerce School has thrown up an extra roadblock in the pursuit of education. Let's make this pursuit open to all students, no matter what their major is.
(Harris Freier is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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