Column: The 'wait' could be over

Getting rid of the wait list is upsetting students and professors alike

Andre Fuller / Roundup

With schools cutting classes, the last thing any student needs is to not have the ability to get into a class because it’s based on a lottery system.

Doing away with the waiting list, Pierce College is deciding to put the fate of students’ academic lives to chance. This is a plan that hasn’t been thought through to its fullest potential.

Having a waiting list is beneficial to all students and faculty. There are students that waited and waited for classes they couldn’t get into, just for the board to say, “Sorry, but you’re out of luck because you didn’t win the game of chance.”

Where’s the justice and fairness in this issue? I guess that still remains to be seen.

In a public meeting Sept. 14, the Academic Senate addressed this issue.

Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh, vice president of academic affairs, said Pierce College was abolishing the waiting list and going with the lottery system.

There are senate members who, now opposed to the abolishment of the waiting list, were under a different impression last semester.

Before the Sept. 14 meeting, senate members agreed about letting individual departments decide whether they wanted to get rid of waiting lists.

Unlike the math department, which decided to do away with the waiting list, the English department wanted to keep the waiting list.

Richard J. Follett, an English professor, is one of the senate members who is upset about the college’s plan to abolish the waiting list.

“We were told in May that some departments can use the waiting list system, and some don’t have to,” Follett said. “Now they are doing away with it?”

The lack of communication is visible between senate members.

“When you have faculty members that want to have a waiting list and then you do away with it,” Follett explained, “there’s a problem.”

Organizational skills are must in order to succeed in a business or institution. However, the skills of keeping things organized are not present at Pierce College. If several senate members can’t come together about whether or not to abolish the waiting list system, what faith do I have in them bringing the lottery system together?

How can I feel safe with trying to get into a class when I have “lottery” odds stacked against me?

With the waiting list, everything is made easier because the students who weren’t able to get in the first week have a better chance of getting in the next week because they are on the waiting list.

Conversely, with the lottery, if you can’t get to the class early enough the first day, it’s going to be very hard for any student to take the class. It further takes up the time of already-enrolled students while the teachers try to figure out which students to pick at random for the class.

Teachers, are you supposed to know that the student you pick at random wants to take the class, or just wants to fill up the schedule they paid for?

The California State Assembly and Senate passed Title V, which states that community colleges need to function more like universities. The college is invested into the faculty.

With all this miscommunication between faculty members and senate members, is the community college really investing in its faculty?

If you are left scratching your head, don’t worry. I was too. Changing from the waiting list system is not only wrong, but it will further complicate an issue that is already in disarray.