Add-Drop to Appear Online Next Spring Add-Drop for Spring 2003

By wpengine | November 22, 2002

Beginning in the spring semester, Cornell students will no longer need to go from department to department in order to get their add-drop slips signed thanks to the new online add-drop process recently announced by the University Registrar’s office.

Development

According to David Yeh, assistant vice president and University registrar, “We’ve been planning and working on developing this over the past two years.”

The system functions much like CoursEnroll with students being able to add or drop classes using a program in an updated version of Just the Facts.

“This is an extension to CoursEnroll. It’s a continuous enhancement to our desire to provide service delivery and using technology as a vehicle,” Yeh said.

Just the Facts

The first step in integrating the online add-drop system will occur after Thanksgiving break, when the new version of Just the Facts will be available for students to download to their computers. Students will then be able to use the system from their homes at the beginning of the semester.

“Beginning Dec. 2, what students can actually do is go into Just the Facts and find out whether or not they need to see their faculty advisor. Each of the colleges has made a determination of whether or not their students must see their faculty advisor or not,” Yeh said.

The new system is designed so that students who want to add or drop will be able to see a “flag” on the add-drop screen that indicates whether or not they are required to visit their advisor before proceeding. According to the announcement released by the Registrar’s office, students in the College of Art, Architecture and Planning; the College of Engineering; the School of Hotel Administration; the Internal Transfer Division and the graduate school will all have to meet with their advisor before adding or dropping.

According to Yeh, the advisors will be able to turn off the flag when they deem it appropriate. “There’s a lot of local control that’s available,” he said.

“It [online add-drop] doesn’t take away the importance of advising because it really still encourages faculty to have that advising and planning for students on a longer term basis than once a year or once a semester,” Yeh added.

All students will be able to use the online CoursEnroll beginning in January. According to the Registrar’s office, seniors and juniors only will be permitted to add and drop courses from 7:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. on Jan. 16. During the same hours on Jan. 17, sophomores, freshmen, graduate and professional students will be permitted to add and drop. Finally, beginning Jan. 20, online add-drop will be available 24 hours a day beginning at 7:30 a.m.

The semester deadline for adding a course will be Feb. 7 and the deadline for dropping a course will be March 7.

All students except for extramural students will be able to utilize online add-drop. This includes transfer students or those coming back from time away from Cornell who will also be able to use online add-drop to build their course list, as many do not participate in CoursEnroll.

For Lauren Doliner ’04, who as a January freshman, had to add and drop courses at course exchange to create a schedule during a very difficulty time. Many new students, like Lauren, were busy participating in activities such as the Greek system’s formal membership recruitment the week before classes began during last January’s add-drop period.

Doliner said that had she been able to utilize the add-drop, she would have definitely saved herself time. “I wouldn’t have had to worry about being late because I would have been able to add all of my courses from home,” she said.

Yeh said that a formal course exchange will not take place this year because of the online add-drop. Paper add-drop slips for the most part will be taken out of circulation, except in certain cases.

“There are some exceptions,” Yeh said. “The exceptions are those who are trying to take more than a normal load, defined by each college.”

One of the benefits to having a computerized add-drop is the ability to ensure that students are added to classes or dropped from classes immediately. “When you submit your requests for add-drop, you’re in that course or you’re out of that course. You’re not waiting to find out whether or not you’re in like you do with CoursEnroll. CoursEnroll is really like a pre-enrollment, whereas add-drop is real,” Yeh said.

Students who are not able to get into a course can still talk with the professor about admittance.

“This doesn’t mean that you can’t have the add-drop form and go to a faculty member. Most faculty are receptive to talking with the student about their enrolling in their course,” Yeh said. “We don’t want the system to necessarily drive and make decisions for you.”

In developing the online add-drop, Yeh said that a number of different factors were considered.

“There’s a set of controls that the colleges have said is very important to them and that’s what the system allows and basically automates,” he said.

The Registrar’s office considered the limits placed on courses because of size or school. “One of the complaints we’ve heard and the colleges have heard is that sometimes if there is a student in a certain college they can’t get into courses in other colleges. What the system allows each college to do now, especially for larger courses, is to be able to actually assign numbers of enrollments for college or course,” Yeh said.

The online add-drop will not create waiting lists, according to Yeh. “We don’t have requisite checking, but that’s because we’re really looking at how this is going to change and then we’re going to add new functionality as we go along. This is kind of a first step,” he said.

“Right now we want to put the core in and then we’re going to look at how we can fit wait lists as one additional features in terms of how students can get into courses,” he added.

In testing the computerized version, Yeh said, “College registrars played a key role in testing. We also had a number of students help us with testing.”

One of the most important benefits to the online add-drop is the time it saves students. “I hope, and we envision when we work with the colleges, that this will really help students in terms of getting into classes and doing the adds and drops more sanely than they have before,” Yeh said.

Additionally, the online add-drop will save administrators and staff a lot of time because of the decrease in paper add-drop slips.

“This was the next advancement to CoursEnroll. We were trying to look at ways in which we could do a number of things using technology as that vehicle. One is to really improve services to students and, number two, look at what is really the high cost of transactions. Every time we have a piece of paper, someone’s got to enter that data that’s already been filled out somewhere else. We have a lot of paper going around.”

Maggie Lorenc ’04 said that she would definitely utilize the online add-drop because of its convenience and quickness. “It’ll save me having to wake up early to stand in a ridiculously long line to add a single class,” she said.

Archived article by Kate Cooper

Forum Raises Farm Worker Rights

By wpengine November 25, 2002

A forum organized by the newly formed Cornell Farm Worker Advocacy Coalition was held last Thursday evening in Uris Hall. A series of speakers ranging from local migrant farm workers to the director of the Cornell Migrant Program spoke to an audience of about 40 people about important issues currently facing farm workers in upstate New York. The panel of six stressed the lack of human and labor rights afforded to migrant farm workers in the state and how students could help gain fundamental rights for the workers. This was one of the first events of the new student organization, started to get Cornell students more involved in helping local farm workers. Migrant farm workers, of which there are approximately 47,000 in New York alone, often migrate or perform seasonal labor on different kinds of farms, ranging from harvesting fruit such as apples, grapes and cherries, to work on dairy farms. While the National Labor Relations Act of 1995 entitles most workers to many fundamental labor rights, farm workers are exempt from this legislation and therefore are exempt from most labor laws considered standard for other industries in the U.S. The panel explained and illustrated many examples of such laws, including the right to workmen’s compensation and sick leave, minimum wage and freedom from harassment. A highlight of the program were three farm workers, Irlain Theodore, Aleus Hilaire and Augustin Dumerci, who spoke about their experiences during the past 15 to 20 years. Each told a similar story of coming to the United States from the Caribbean and the various jobs they had worked as a farm worker since that time. While each had been in the industry for a number of years, none had received any more substantial increase in payment for work and experience. They all spoke of working in conditions where managing farmers withheld payment for long periods or infinitely, and without water or light. While some of the workers expressed their enjoyment of farm work in general, they all hoped that and actively encouraged their children to succeed enough to be employed in other industries. Because conditions are so poor for farm workers, and real wages have actually decreased over the past thirty years, Hilaire asked the audience who would harvest their food in the future, implying that conditions were so bad that soon everyone would leave the industry. The efforts of organizations such as the United Farm Workers and Rural and Migrant Ministries have been able to lobby legislatures on behalf of farm workers and to organize farm workers themselves to increase their power. However, the latter has remained quite daunting because the workers are not even given the right to organize or unionize. The panel stressed the importance of empowering farm workers themselves, rather than continuously advocating for them. “Farmworkers are the ones leading the charge; we’re helping them along the way.” said Bill Abom of Rural and Migrant Ministries. The idea for the new student groupcame last year from several students and Herb Engman, director of the Cornell Migrant Program, an outreach program which began in 1971 as the Agricultural Manpower Project, part of the department of human development in the College of Human Ecology. Engman spoke extensively about many of the local issues affecting farm workers as well as systems in which Cornell students and faculty have worked on behalf of local farm workers in the past. During the latter part of the program, Engman and members of the Rural and Migrant Ministry as well as some audience members talked about the potential help that students could give by lobbying the state legislature, doing research and creating a knowledge base about farm worker issues for students. Several of the student founders have engaged in independent work during the school year or summer through local organizations. Rebecca Bixby, president of Cornell Farm Worker Advocacy Coalition, and Pilar McKay worked on a field interview project this summer, involving interviewing migrant workers across N.Y. about sanitary condition across the state. Alyson Greenlee, another organizer of the Cornell Farm Worker Advocacy Coalition, worked for Rural and Migrant Ministries this summer. “Before working [at the Rural and Migrant Ministries], I had no idea that this issue existed, because farm workers are totally hidden from everyone. And even in school, you don’t learn that they don’t have the same rights as other workers,” Greene said. “Even in ILR, we spent maybe one day learning about how farm workers are exempt from most labor laws.” Discussion between the audience and the panel veered towards the immense structural causes of farm worker impoverishment and lack of rights. While they are being oppressed by farmers, many of the farmers are not making large profits at all and are in turn oppressed by the distributors and supermarkets who sell the food. “There’s an incredible variation, and it’s not based on need, it’s based on production,” Engman said. “The biggest earners are the truckers, processors and grocery stores.” Bixby said that the struggle is “definitely something that Cornell students can and should be involved with, in the way that it relates to ongoing policy changes regarding immigration and documentation” Archived article by Aliza Wasserman
Canadian Parliament Member Speaks

By wpengine November 25, 2002

A current member of the Canadian Parliament and former Canadian Minister of National Defence, Art Eggleton, spoke this past Friday in Goldwin Smith Hall’s H.E.C. Auditorium on Canadian-U.S. Relations since Sept. 11. The talk was sponsored by the Canadians at Cornell Club, the largest Canadian student organization in the Ivy League. Debunking Myths Eggleton said that he wished to “debunk sad myths” that seemed to develop after the terrorist attacks. These myths include “Canada [being] portrayed as a haven of terrorists” and concerns over the Canadian-U.S. border, the longest undefended border in the world. Eggleton said that Sept. 11 “awakened us all to new dangers [and] ushered in new challenges for Canadians and Americans alike.” The president of the Canadians at Cornell Club, Daniel Braun ’04 — a Canadian citizen — said, “When Sept. 11 hit, I didn’t feel like a foreign citizen and it hit close to home … I’m sure other Canadian students felt the same way.” First Country Eggleton said that Canada was the “first country outside of the U.S. to respond” to Sept. 11 and “among the first countries to offer assistance for what would eventually become Operation Enduring Freedom.” Eggleton noted that the “Canadian contribution [is] going largely unreported.” Just three months after Sept. 11 the Canadian government finished work on their budget, with nearly “seven billion dollars [reserved for] all initiatives.” These initiatives include the Smart Border Initiative, which is an attempt to “create a seamless yet secure border” with the U.S. According to Eggleton, “more than one hundred billion dollars U.S. cross the border everyday” which is more than the U.S. trades with all of the European Union countries combined. Though Canadian military assistance was provided for Operation Enduring Freedom during Eggleton’s term as Minister of National Defence, he noted the existence of “growing discomfort with American unilateralism.” Referring to an explanation given to him by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for American unilateralism, Eggleton said, “It is the mission that will define the coalition and not the coalition that will define the mission.” “The principle of multilateralism is still valid” so that the entire international community has a voice, Eggleton said. He added that the “very rules we now seek to circumvent may be the same rules we wish to evoke.” Eggleton also said “as a general principle preemptive action is fraught with dangers … the U.S. or other Western nations [do not] have an unblemished record [and] the solution we sought often [becomes] a problem later.” However, Eggleton noted that Canada is “not neutral when liberty and human rights are at threat” and that “we seek the same outcomes [as the US]: freedom and justice and peace.” “We in Canada are not a militaristic nation, nor do we spend a lot of money on the military,” Eggleton said. He also stated that “perhaps it is because we share so much with you [Americans] and think so much of you that we expect so much of you,” adding that “if war is being inflicted on our friends we rise to the occasion.” Audience members had the opportunity to ask questions after the lecture. One member asked about Canada’s involvement in the United State’s alleged violation of Geneva convention resolutions concerning the treatment of prisoners. Canada passed custody of prisoners they captured in Afghanistan to the U.S. with “assurances the U.S. would follow Geneva conventions,” Eggleton said. He noted that the main issues over prisoner treatment centered on whether the captives were prisoners of war or unlawful combatants. Organizers said they felt lucky to have such a prominent speaker come to Cornell. “Eggleton’s lecture was informative and insightful,” Braun said. “He is at the forefront of Canadian decision making.” Archived article by Brian Kaviar