Popular Classes Overflow Rooms

Second semester started Wednesday with classrooms filled to their brims, professors scrambling to find additional teaching fellows (TFs) and core classes planning lotteries—even after moving to larger classrooms.

“I never actually entered Emerson 105,” said Hui Hua “Ada” Wan ’07, who tried to attend Science B-62, “The Human Mind” yesterday afternoon. “I just stood outside and was mobbed by equally anxious students.”

TFs for The Human Mind were forced to close the doors on the overflow crowd so that those lucky—or early—enough to grab seats could hear Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker’s first lecture.

Pinker estimated that around 500 people tried to squeeze into Emerson 105’s 300-odd seats—and the room’s aisles.

“It’s a major pain in the neck that there’s no pre-registration so we’re left with this major last-minute disruption,” said Pinker, who authored the best-selling book “The Blank Slate” and was publicly wooed from MIT last year.

A proposal by Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby to have students register for classes during the previous semester was shot down by the Faculty last year.

But at least one student managed to predict that Pinker’s fame would lead to overflow-level interest in The Human Mind—and tried to pre-register herself.

Moira G. Weigel ’06 sent Pinker an e-mail last August asking him to secure her a spot in the course.

“I wrote him some sycophantic and rather awful e-mail to the effect of, ‘Oh, Steven Pinker...please can I be in your class?’” Weigel said.

But the flattering e-mail that Weigel sent last year proved to be no help at 1:30 p.m. yesterday.

“I couldn’t get within hearing distance of the door,” she said.

The course will meet in Science Center B, which holds nearly 500, on Tuesday, but Pinker said yesterday that difficulties with finding qualified TFs will still force him to lottery the course.

Though Human Mind TF Andrew E. Shtulman attributed some of the turnout to Pinker’s name, not only famous professors drew substantial crowds this week.

Robert A. Paarlberg, a visiting professor of government from Wellesley College, entered Government 1790, “American Foreign Policy” only to find a mob scene yesterday afternoon.

“They came today not because they knew anything about me or anything about the course, because both were entirely new,” Paarlberg said.

Though Paarlberg said that he had guessed anywhere from 60 to 140 students would turn up, even that wide range turned out to be too low.

“The seats were full and there were people standing in the aisles” he said of Harvard Hall 202, which holds 180 people. “It’s probably the greatest inconvenience to teaching fellows who want to get their schedules nailed down. They’re not sure if there will be one, two, three or no sections offered to them.”

Students in last semester’s Computer Science 96, “System Design Projects” created a computer model that they say can predict enrollments with greater accuracy than humans, and administrators may use the program in the future (see related story, page 1).

But Pinker’s TF said that the massive turnout for The Human Mind had some benefits.

“I think it added to the mystique of the new course,” Shtulman said.

“It’s fine for me,” he added. “ I wanted to teach more sections.”

Stanley Cavell, Cabot professor emeritus of aesthetics and the general theory of value, found scores of people packed in the basement of the Barker Center Wednesday for his 25-person seminar, Literature 142, “Topics in Philosophy and Literature.” Instead of shutting the door on them, Cavell picked up the class and took his students to Emerson Hall 305—where people were still sitting in the aisles of the 80-seat room.

Cavell said that he will choose his students based on one-paragraph statements due at today’s meeting.

“I feel sorry for Prof. Cavell, having to read one hundred of those statements,” said John A. Hulsey ’04, who ultimately decided not to apply for the course.

Not everyone taking up space in Emerson 105 yesterday even had any interest in enrolling in Pinker’s course.

“There are some people who showed up today at lecture who are interested in TFing the course instead of taking the course,” Shtulman said.

But Pinker said walk-on TF applicants will be carefully vetted.

“I certainly won’t be dragging people off the streets,” he said. “The TFs have to be qualified.”

—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb can be reached at jdgottl@fas.harvard.edu.