Oberlin popularity breeds crowding

The current on-campus housing crunch, causing many lounges in South, East, Dascomb, Barrows, and Langston to be converted into students' rooms, was brought about by a combination of several positive factors. However, these pluses have left many in Res Life scrambling to fill the need for increased beds with the arrival of a large first-year class and the loss of half of Barrows.

Despite more stringent admissions standards for this year's first-year class, Oberlin has received 65 more incoming students than average. When combined with fewer students abroad and more students on leave choosing to come back to Oberlin, we are left with the current housing conundrum. While this is all great news for the admissions department and Oberlin in general it has left other departments, most notably Res Life, to pick up the slack.

Though we may gripe about CDS and the outrageously long lines at enrollment, it is obvious that things are improving for Oberlin. To be able to attract the strongest first-years in recent memory, and a veritable bumper crop of them, while retaining larger numbers of students on leave is quite an achievement. Is it the new Environmental Science building drawing such record crowds? Or could it be the proposed Science Center, which necessitated the loss of half of Barrows, a remarkable feat in and of itself, which is cause for such a strong reception? If it is the "build it and they will come" strategy which is attracting better students, and more of them, common sense requires that Oberlin continue to build and renovate at a record pace.

However, administration must not forget that while better facilities are wonderful, it is a stable, comfortable "home" that keeps students coming back year after year. It really doesn't matter if labs are state of the art , or if lecture halls are equipped with Lay-Z Boy recliners if students are crammed into over capacity residence halls the twelve hours a day they are not in classes or working. If Oberlin is going to continue razing residence halls to construct more elaborate facilities, we will soon have nowhere to put the students who are here to use such amenities. In the future, administrators must closely examine the effects of such improvements to make sure they are not adversely affecting one vital aspect of student life to improve another.

Oberlin popularity breeds crowding

The registrar's office must evaluate and redesign its current enrollment process. As every good student knows, the beginning of every semester brings with it wasted time in the Root Room while larger personal responsibilities fall by the wayside. The registrar's office, like many other campus offices, ignores the reality of a student's lifestyle, and the odious chores that must naturally come with their first day on campus - moving into new residences, straightening out banking concerns, registering for courses, etc. The last thing any returning student needs is an hour spent filling out yet another survey featuring questions that range from the pointless to the absurd.

The standard enrollment procedure consists of a few signatures, some paper shuffling, and a great deal of waiting in line. This year brought an especially long wait with the distribution of new student valedines, an annual rite of fall designed to confuse and complicate the lives of students who want little more than to run home and sanitize their bedrooms. Nevertheless, lines snaked around the perimeter of the Root Room this past Tuesday, with students waiting up to an hour to collate a hand-full of forms and receive their IDs. And for all you naïve first-years who thought that this year's enrollment was nothing more than a painful aberration, think again. Every semester affords the same frustrations as the last, and inefficiency, it seems, is the name of the game. After all, does the registrar really need an update on what local newspaper students read? Or where it is published? The same conversations always sprout up as students waddle their way to the finish line: "Why do we have to do this? What's the point?"

The registrar's office should explore distributing enrollment packages through the mail room, or extending the hours of enrollment to spread out the dense, day-long rush of students. More than one alternative seems feasible to the time wasted in Carnegie. Why not develop a web-based enrollment, something akin to but less complicated than the new registration system? The College wants to make sure students are on campus. So why not make students pick up access codes from their mailboxes and have them enroll at their own convenience through a web browser? In a sophisticated world of computers and technology, it makes little sense to continue practicing arcane methods of enrollment that accomplish very little over the course of a very long time.