Barry Kane Watch: He's Baaaaaccckkkk

Time flies, doesn't it?  A mere hour ago, the distinguished Barry S. Kane, FAS Registrar extraordinaire, sent his first email of the semester.  The implications, of course, are clear: the semester is over, another year has passed, and you better fill out your Q Guide or prepare to get bumrushed, KGB-style.

Well, the administration has yet to take those sorts of drastic measures to raise the 74% (pretty impressive) response rate.  But, if you happen to have a have a from: Barry Kane, to: trash email filter, you might want to perk up.  The Registrar has finally learned the power of incentives.

Details, post-jump:

According to the email:

Bravo Barry--FlyBy has only been waiting on this one for years.  But oh, will it work. Can we set an over/under on the participation rate this time?  Has to be at least 98%, no?  All those people you know who claim to not want to see their grades will be the first ones logging in to fill this out.

However, has the Registrar deeply considered the ramifications of this?  On margin, those extra 26% who refuse to fill out the Q are the hardest of hard core holdouts.  They set up Barry Kane filters, they refuse the appeals of such campus luminaries as Matt L. Sundquist '09, Sangu J. Delle '10, and Clifton G. Dawson '07, and don't even care enough for their future brethren to lower that fanatic-inflated overall rating on that small seminar class.  These free-riders just refused to care enough...until now.

But what will these lowly moochers do?  Destroy the sanctity of the ratings, that's what.  FlyBy envisons races for the fastest completed Q evaluations, a spike in "not applicable" selections from students who only showed up for the midterms, and a full slate of empty comment boxes (now, instead of 35% of the class taking the time to call lectures boring, it'll be 20%).

But oh well, FlyBy has already decided to boycott the guide anyway--bring back the books!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons