Rice PIN process violates student freedoms
Over the last few weeks, there has been a plethora of university surveys filling student e-mail inboxes and spam filters. Unlike most mass messages, which ask me to increase my mortgage by up to six inches, I was glad to reply to these by expressing what I consider the most important aspect of Rice: student freedom.
Through a wet-campus alcohol policy, lack of a core curriculum, the Honor Code and college governments, Rice has established a precedent of student authority, letting us dictate our own successes and failures. This student freedom becomes most clear when compared to other universities, where alcohol violations are punished with extreme prejudice and surprise room searches by resident advisors are a norm. No wonder all my friends at other schools moved off campus, except the one guy who decided to become a dictatorial RA himself.
Even other college newspapers, supposed bastions of free speech, are still regulated — just look at the Daily Texan with its Texas Student Publications Board. Although Rice has full right as a private institution to oversee publication of the Thresher, the administration has resisted censorship or regulation of any variety. In the end, at Rice we are considered adult enough to drink responsibly, spend our massive college budgets wisely and dictate our own system of justice properly. But for some reason, we are not allowed to choose classes without a professor holding our hand.
For those who do not know, to register for classes, a student must arrange a meeting time with an adviser, acquire a PIN release form from the adviser and give the PIN release form to the college coordinator — assuming that the coordinator can be found — at which point the student can receive a PIN to log in to ESTHER and register for classes. And this year it all took place over a long weekend, which means bonus points for difficulty.
Of course, some of this is misleading — the term “adviser,” for example. A more accurate title for these professors would be “PIN-giver-outers.” I assume students are forced to talk to advisers before registering for classes in some sort of attempt to fix Rice’s mediocre academic advising program. But instead it makes the problem worse, leaving professors’ meeting times crammed with so many students that they barely have a chance to scribble down a signature before the next student barges through the door, leaving students who know what they want to take verily annoyed and students who actually need some advising unsatisfied.
Students seek advice when they need it. But that advice is not necessarily needed every semester, the exact week before registration. If students were not forced to meet with professors to receive PIN release forms, the advising system could escape its current quagmire. In contrast to the typical onslaught, professors could meet with students who actually want to meet with them, reducing the quantity of meetings but increasing quality. We know that professors are there if we need them for advice, whether days or months before we sign up for classes. But forcing students to meet with professors makes advising a chore, not a privilege.
Even if we need advice, there are sources of curricular wisdom besides faculty. The college system ensures that freshmen can chat with seniors, asking questions about classes that even professors would not be able to answer. The Office of the Registrar’s ECAPP degree audit ensures that students can take matters of checking any problems into their own hands. Indeed, the Student Association’s own course evaluation Web site clearly demonstrates that students are willing to take the initiative to find advice on their own terms. Again, there’s that whole student freedom thing, I suppose. Forcing students to jump through bureaucratic hoops dumbs down the system into a nanny state not worthy of the university or its students.
Sure, the problem is not drastic. Students seem to be getting by, and there are no major problems. But let me just put it this way: at Texas A&M, students do not need to meet with an adviser to register for classes. Are Rice students not smart enough to register for classes on their own? I didn’t think so.
Evan Mintz is a Hanszen College junior and executive editor.
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