Pen, Paper Sometimes Better Than Broadband

To the editors:

I have to agree with the dissent to your staff editorial on online course registration for Harvard (Editorial, “Register.Harvard.Edu,” Oct. 31). All of the concerns expressed about worsening an imperfect advising process are quite justified. Beyond this, however, the development of an online course registration system would only lead to further headaches for students and further unnecessary costs for the University.

In this digital age, we have developed an incredible tendency to prefer electronic solutions to tasks which can be accomplished as well, or nearly as well, with a pencil and paper—and we seem oblivious to the diminishing returns of any move toward the digital solutions. Look at all the people using a $500 PalmPilot to do the work of a pad of note paper if you don’t believe me. Online registration, if experience is any judge, would not only not ameliorate the hassles of study card day but make them significantly worse. I had four years to deal with Cornell’s maddening CourseEnroll, and am delighted now by the relative ease of study cards. Online course enrollment, in truth, is a matter of sitting by your computer, waiting for the stroke of midnight so that you can hope to actually get into your classes by acting fast, and then tapping your fingers for at least 25 stressful minutes, clicking again and again while the server fails to connect. It’s worse than calling a concert ticket hotline on the first day of sales.

For those who cannot bear the thought that “medieval” Cambridge and Oxford might have used paper...you’re right, and to a great extent they still do. A remarkable amount of business, from distribution of grades and scholarships to communication with friends, is done via paper and campus mail. It is not the fastest system existing in the world, but it is the most personalized and least stressful I’ve ever experienced. Course registration, by the way, is done in highly personalized discussion with advisors followed by a quick submission of an exam form. Harvard already has an only slightly more complex version or this—why in the world should it be changed?

In a phrase—it ain’t broke, so let’s not fix it. Not even with broadband.

Sally A. Marshall

Oct. 31, 2003

The writer is a first-year graduate student in the Department of Classics.