Amid growing complaints among students about the difficulties they face getting into popular government classes, the department has announced a new selection process through which it will solicit applications and choose whom to accept for its seminars.
Students still have to apply for government seminars through the registrar's office, but starting next quarter, the registrar will pass all the names onto the government department, which will make all course selection decisions.
At this point, students will fill out an online seminar application set to include questions about seminar choice, year, major and reasons for taking the course. Finally, the appropriate professor and departmental administrator Lisa Wallace will review the applications and decide whom to accept.
The new system is a reaction to seniors who have been locked out of seminars they needed for graduation.
One of these, Greg Holtz '05, complained to administrators after he was not able to get into professor Carol Bohmer's government and law seminar. Holtz is only a government minor, but the course was effectively the one that would fit his political theory and law major.
"The school knew there were a lot of '05 majors coming down the line, so they should have planned ahead. This definitely makes me somewhat disappointed with my experience with the major," Holtz said.
In past years the department has had little ability to discriminate based on interest, need and seniority.
This meant that senior majors did not have a significant advantage over underclassmen.
Some seminar professors had to work with nearly twice as many applicants as they could let in.
Seminars have a standard enrollment limit of 16. Professor Bohmer waitlisted about eight students for her last seminar and turned down several others outright.
"It is difficult to have a situation where you have a seminar where you have these people trying to get in, and you have to make these awful decisions about who gets in and who doesn't," Bohmer said.
The new application is one of several methods the government department has considered to ease the massive waitlists that have plagued the department for years. Wallace created the application form as one partial solution.
"It's kind of an experiment. If it works we're going to try to do this for other courses as well. If it doesn't, then we'll have to go back and rethink," Wallace said.
Professor Nelson Kasfir, who added seminar credit to his Government 17 class this term to lessen the problem, expressed similar uncertainty about the new process.
"The idea seems plausible, but I suppose we can't be sure until we try it," Kasfir said.
While getting into government classes is notoriously difficult, many senior government majors and minors said they had no trouble getting into seminars when asked by The Dartmouth. The worst hassle some majors and minors faced was a brief stint on a waitlist.
"I got right into my seminar, but I guess I did get on the waitlist early. If you don't get on the waitlist before the class begins, you might have a pretty hard time getting in," Neil Desai '05 said. "That said, I can't name anyone offhand who wasn't able to get into a government seminar they needed."
Another government major, Christian Weeks '05, was waitlisted briefly for a senior seminar but was able to add the class when a few people dropped out.
Weeks observed that professors often help out by letting a few extra students into their seminars.
"It seems to me that just about everyone who wanted to get into a seminar has been able to do that," Weeks said.
Saleema Moore '05 also had little trouble getting into her two government seminars but credited her success to luck.
"There were some senior majors who didn't get into the class while underclassmen who weren't even majors got in," Moore said.
