Core Course Lotteries Complicate Shopping

On Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., five hours before study cards were due, the professor of Literature and Arts B-25, "Rembrandt and His Contemporaries," walked up to the podium in the Fogg's Norton Lecture Hall and confronted an overflow crowd.

After surveying the audience of about 500, the professor, Seymour Slive, decided that sophomores would be excluded from the class because it will be offered again in 1991.

Outside the classroom, a crowd of about 30 sophomores gathered to argue with two section leaders for the course, which had never been lotteried before. They had shopped no other courses, and didn't know what to put on their study cards.

Later, Slive said that he never expected more than 400 people to show up for his course, adding that he had no choice but to have a lottery, even with the impending study card deadline.

"That was unpredictable," Slive said of the heavy course turnout. "My heart is broken about [the lottery]," he said.

The dilemma faced by Slive and the sophomores in his "Rembrandt" class is but one example of the confusion and frustration generated by course lotteries in Core Curriculum classes over the past week.

More than 1000 students total were lotteried out of four separate Literature and Arts B classes, although there was some overlap as students tried first one, and then another, course in hopes of satisfying their Core requirement.

The four Literature and Arts B courses which were lotteried, "Jazz," "Rembrandt," "Monuments of Japan" and "Modern Art and Abstraction," numbered about 1200 students after the lotteries were held.

But while professors and students agree that the lotteries were a poor solution to a pressing problem, no one appears to have an answer.

"It's a real puzzlement," says Core Director Susan W. Lewis, who adds that she had not anticipated the surge in enrollment for the art- and musicrelated courses that held lotteries. "Our Literature and Arts B courses are very stable from year to year," she says.

Several professors say that the whole issue of overcrowded courses needs to be re-examined, and they add that the Core Curriculum's 10-year review this spring provides the perfect vehicle for doing so.

Rockefeller Professor of Oriental Art John M. Rosenfield, who teaches "Monuments" and is a member of the faculty's Standing Committee on the Core, says that the confusion surrounding course lotteries damages the Core's educational mission.

"This kind of tension and turmoil goes against the educational environment," Rosenfield says.

And Fine Arts Department head Neil A. Levine says that his department will examine the entire issue of lotteries at its next meeting because three of the four Literature and Arts B lotteries were conducted by Fine Arts professors. "Our department is very concerned about the fairness of the lottery," Levine says.

Levine says he would like to come up with some sort of guidelines that professors in his department can follow when overcrowded classes occur.

But while professors express concern about inconsistencies in the way the lotteries were held, they say that theproblems of the past week may simply be the resultof a set of unique circumstances.

First, they say, there are more Literature andArts B courses being offered this semester thanlast, which means that there is a large pool ofstudents who planned on taking the requirementthis spring. This year Literature and Arts B wasthe only Core area which offered more classes inthe spring than in the fall.

And second, there may be a heightened interestin the course material of several Literature andArts B courses, according to several professors.

For example, Yasuko Fukuhara, the head sectionleader for "Monuments," asked all students in thecourse to write down their reasons for taking theclass.

Fukuhara says that many students said theirinterest in "Monuments" was stimulated by Corecourses offered in the fall, such as ForeignCultures 42, "Building the Shogun's Realm," andForeign Cultures 26, "Industrial East Asia."

Getting it Over With

The second most popular reason given wasgetting the Literature and Arts B requirement outof the way, Fukuhara says.

Many students concur with Fukuhara'simpressions of the Core area's new-foundpopularity.

Ulrike D. Drees '90, who is in "Rembrandt,"says that those students who were not lookingforward to Literature and Arts B and have beenholding off on that requirement took advantage ofthis semester's selection of good courses.

"I think that Literature and Arts B isgenerally an unpopular Core area, and thissemester, there are a lot of good classesoffered," says Mark R. Hoffenberg '89, who wasfirst lotteried out of, and then accepted backinto, Fine Arts 13b.

Assistant Professor of Music Graeme M. Boonesays he attributes the increase in popularity ofhis class to a recent upswing in the popularity ofjazz. Boone said his class has grown by about 300percent since two years ago, when it was firstoffered in the Music Department.

But whether or not the subject matter of thecourses was responsible for last week's heavycourse turnouts, students say that the mainproblems caused by the lotteries were intensifiedby the shortened shopping period.

Although this shopping period of eight days wasthree days longer than last semester's, it wasstill shorter than the normal 10-day shoppingperiod, says Registrar Margaret E. Law.

"I just think the system of this one-weekshopping period and the chaos that ensues isunacceptable," Hoffenberg says.

"My feeling is that the shortness of theshopping period intensified the anguish,"Rosenfield says.

And because of the shorter amount of timestudents have to pick classes, both professors andstudents agree that lotteries--if they are goingto be held--should be announced at the verybeginning of a class.

"An absolute requirement would be that [alottery] is announced ahead of time," says AndreiSmrekar, head section leader for "Modern Art." The"Modern Art" class, popularly known as Spots andDots, has always held a lottery.

"I think it's true that students need some kindof warning," says Boone, who announced that hewould hold a lottery during his first lecture.

Some professors say, however, that they neveranticipated they would need a lottery until it wastoo late.

Rosenfield, for one, says he was expectingabout 50 students, but did not realize that alottery would be necessary until after the secondlecture, which was attended by about 200 students.

"We tried to handle it in the most rational andobjective way we could," he says.

Once a professor decides to have a lottery,there is the equally confusing issue of how todecide who gets in. Professors each have differentrationales--some give preference to juniors andseniors because the class will not be offeredagain in the next two years, others let freshmenand concentrators take the course.

Most professors, however, agree with Boone, whosays that there is always a loss when a lotteryhas to be held. "Every student represents such anopportunity, to establish a threshold is aproblem," he says