­Registrar reevaulates priority registration

The Saint Joseph’s University registrar recently raised concerns regarding the number of students who receive priority registration. This year, 22 percent of the student body was granted priority registration, a number that the Registrar’s Office said blurs the true meaning of the word “priority.” 

This concern was brought to the university’s deans at a recent meeting: Dean William Madges of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), Dean Joseph DiAngelo of the Haub School of Business (HSB), and Paul DeVito of the College of Professional and Liberal Studies. Gerard J. Donahue, university registrar, presented comparable schools’ percentages of students with priority registration to the deans in order to illustrate that Saint Joseph’s University is an outlier.

The total percentage of students that have priority registration at schools ran from as low as one percent at Boston College to as high as 13 percent at Loyola Marymount. Saint Joseph’s University sits much higher, at 22 percent. 

Madges looked to the 19 department chairs of the CAS for their position on the issue of priority registration. 

“Once you recognize it is a logistics problem, you look to see who is in the group and whether or not there is a good rational for having every one of these groups included,” said Madges. “It started in the Registrar’s Office saying, ‘This is unmanageable, so let’s bring it to the attention of the academic administration and have a conversation about it.’ The consensus of the group was that 22 percent of the student body, 11 different groups included, does not seem to make a lot of sense. They do support the idea of reducing the number to something that makes more sense.”

The commonality of groups at universities who receive priority registration appears to be athletes and honors students. In addition to those two groups, St. Joe’s provides early registration to about 11 groups on campus including Hawk Hosts, Air Force ROTC, HSB Co-Ops, and students with disabilities.

Student athlete Keith Belson, ’11, believes that the number of students able to register early needs to be reduced in order to not leave everyone else at a disadvantage.

“This allows those who genuinely need it to be able to have full access to all classes and does not put those who do not have it at a great disadvantage,” said Belson.  “If a quarter of the school gets to register before everyone else, this places the other students with a ‘pick from what’s left’ scenario. The number needs to come down; it’s not fair the way it is now.”

According to Madges, the meeting of academic departments was not conclusive as to who should or should not be granted priority registration in the future. 

"There was some difference of opinion of who should be in the group beyond let’s just say honors and athletes. Some thought clearly it should include students with disabilities while some thought clearly it should include HSB Co-Op students because of the nature of their schedule in terms of work and their classes,” Madges said. 

According to Madges, the academic departments agreed that it is necessary to limit those who receive priority registration to students with rational reasons.

“To give priority registration as a way of saying thank you,” Madges said. “It is a nice idea but then it creates this problem. Where do you draw the line?”

Honors student Robert Manley, ’12, agrees that the number needs to be reduced and that students granted the opportunity to register early should be allowed to for a legitimate reason.

“I think that it is a good idea to limit the number of groups who get priority registration because right now almost a quarter of the school has it,” said Manley. “I think only groups that absolutely need to register early should be able to rather than having groups be able to just as a perk for being a member.”

The department chairs are in agreement to reduce the percentage of students, but a solution has yet to be determined. Conversations on the issue will continue into the fall, according to Madges.

Madges said that the discussions will be open to student government in order to gain perspective from student life and  academic departments.
 

“If there is a general agreement that we have too large of a group in priority registration, who are the students that should be included in priority registration and that is the next step in the conversation,” said Madges.