CHRONICLE The art and craft of arranging dead animal parts... PAGE 09
THE NANYANG
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They weren’t selected for camp, so they held one themselves.
PHOTO | COURTESY
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FIND OUT HOW THEY DID IT
Early subject registration stirs debate CHEONG KAH SHIN SOME popular psychology courses have been snapped up so quickly, psychology majors had no chance to register for them. One psychology major found out that vacancies in two popular courses—Forensic Psychology and Trauma Psychology—had already been taken even before registration for the main school population began. These places had been taken by the main committee members of
the school of Humanities and Social Sciences majoring in psychology, as well as students from other schools taking a second major. They were allocated a subject registration date before July 2nd, which was when the rest of the psychology majors registered their modules. It is fairly common practice for school committee members to be allowed to register for courses before other students. The reason is main committee members must free up their schedule to plan school events that usually happen during late afternoons.
Early registration would give them a higher chance of confirming their timetable plans so that they can fulfil their respective duties. The club’s honarary general secretary, Benjamin Chan, 24, said: “Early registration is wrongly perceived as a reward for the main committee’s contributions to the school. But if anything, it works the other way round.” However, HSS is not the only main committee with registration benefits. The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Nanyang Business School
School of Smart Patriotic Robots
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main committees exercise early registration too, but no one has complained so far. “Perhaps students don’t have to vie for highly competitive modules like trauma and forensic psychology, that’s why the problem hasn’t erupted,” said Assistant Professor Cha Yeow Siah from the Psychology division. “Students face stiff competition while registering for the forensic psychology and trauma psychology classes,” said Professor Cha, who added that there were only 30 places in each module but with more than 70 students vying for them.” “Due to the competitivity, perhaps that’s why early registration
seems particularly unfair.” The club committee’s vice president, Lim Ming Han, 24, said: “I would have chosen to register along with the rest of the school had I known these subjects were so in demand and early registration would disadvantage the rest of the school population so much.” The fourth-year psychology major said he only knew about the early registration privileges two months after joining the committee. Most of the HSS students who spoke to The Chronicle were unaware that the policy existed prior to the controversy. >> CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE
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