The Herald editorial on October 22 addressed the new priority registration policy, which will be effective for Spring 2014 registration onwards. The editorial stated that “students with priority registration, excluding seniors and graduate students, will be limited to signing up for 16 hours of classes this spring.”

This is not the case. While Policy 1.3140 (which followed the normal university procedure for academic policy approval and which was presented to the SGA in September, with no adverse comments received) does limit to 16 the total number of hours for which an undergraduate student may register during the priority registration period, it goes on to state that students may subsequently add additional courses “up to the limits established by the university and published in the Graduate and Undergraduate Catalog” during the open registration period, which immediately follows the priority registration period.

This information was communicated by the University Registrar to all affected students via e-mail on October 21.

The new policy thus affords all students the opportunity to register for the same number of courses as before, while reducing the extent to which seats in classes may be unavailable to students who do not have the special priority registration privilege. It therefore addresses the needs of various student groups in a reasonable and fair manner.

Gordon Emslie, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Mark Reeves, SGA Representative to the University Senate Executive Committee